Staring at God

by Simon Heffer

  The press discussed the possibility of a grant of asylum, and the King started to receive letters of abuse about it. He, and Stamfordham, became so concerned that on 6 April Stamfordham wrote twice in a day to Balfour about the unsuitability of the Romanovs coming to England, and of the ‘very unfair position’ the King had been placed in by the discussion that was taking place ‘not only in Clubs but by working men’.60 The second letter said that, having realised the strength of public opposition, the government had to withdraw the earlier invitation. This weight of lobbying forced Balfour to tell Lloyd George he thought the King had been placed in ‘an awkward position’.61

  The Royal Household was sufficiently alarmed to keep copies of Justice, edited and written by Henry Hyndman, a veteran of the socialist agitation of the 1880s, whose 5 April number was headlined ‘The Need for a British Republic’, an article Stamfordham cited in his second letter.62 The popular press ran lurid articles about the Tsarina’s relations with Rasputin: those who did not vilify the Romanovs mocked them. On 10 April Stamfordham visited Lloyd George ‘to impress upon him the King’s strong opinion that the Emperor and Empress of Russia should not come to this country’.63 He told the prime minister that ‘even if the Government publicly stated that they took the responsibility for Their Imperial Majesties coming, the People would reply that this was done to screen the King.’64 Lloyd George ‘admitted that evidently the situation was more serious than he was aware.’65 The matter came before the War Cabinet, who on 13 April learned that ‘there was a strong feeling hostile to the Czar in certain working-class circles’ and that if the Tsar came to Britain ‘these tendencies might be stimulated and accentuated.’66 With Russia an ally, the cabinet agreed a grant of asylum might strain relations. It was decided the south of France would be best for the Romanovs. A telegram expressing these sentiments was sent to Buchanan, seeking his opinion: he was told not to communicate on the question with the Russians.

  Cecil wired Buchanan on 23 April saying that ‘we are sounding French as to whether they would receive ex-Emperor and Empress. In the meantime you should not hold out any hopes that they can be received in England during the war.’67 That was that. Lloyd George, to appease the King, but conscious of the need to keep the new Russian government as an ally, managed to get France to offer asylum, but by then the moderates who could have secured the Romanovs’ safe departure from Russia had lost influence. In any case, it was widely believed the Tsar would refuse to leave even had the means been provided. On 27 April Cecil answered a question in the Commons about the Romanovs, saying the government had taken ‘no initiative’; and there it rested.68 Word came in July that for their safety the Romanovs would be moved to Siberia.69 After a further year of increasingly harsh treatment, during the night of 16–17 July 1918 Nicholas II and his family were murdered in the cellar of a house in Ekaterinburg.

  When he heard the news the King was horrified. A month of Court mourning for ‘dear Nicky’ was declared, at the prompting of the King’s uncle, the Duke of Connaught; ‘dear Nicky, who I fear was shot last month by the Bolshevists, we can get no details … it is a foul murder, I was devoted to Nicky, who was the kindest of men, a thorough gentleman’.70 Yet the King had consciously thrown up a chance to prevent it, to keep the revolutionary ethos at bay in Britain, and to ensure the stability of his own throne at a time of deep public discontent. It was not until well after his death that the role he and Stamfordham (who predeceased him by five years) played in the end of the Romanovs was disclosed, with Lloyd George, who knew everything, omitting on instructions from Hankey any reference to it from his memoirs.

  Despite the provocation of welcoming the Tsar and his family to Britain being avoided, a lively debate about republicanism in Britain continued throughout the summer of 1917, not least as a result of Wells’s intervention, with various pamphlets circulated. It petered out long before the Armistice but, until it did, the Royal Family remained anxious for their future. The King’s notoriously dim mother, Queen Alexandra, to whom he was devoted – he called her ‘motherdear’ – may partly have influenced his views. The Queen Mother told Mrs Asquith, who visited her in early July, that ‘I suppose all thrones will vanish now’.71 She added for good measure: ‘That horrid little man Ll G behaved so abominably to your husband – but your Henry will come again … but I must say nothing!!’

  During the succeeding months, as Stamfordham remained on high alert about anti-monarchist feeling, further steps were taken to shore up the popularity of George V and his family. Lloyd George urged the King to visit industrial centres and praised him heartily when he did. In a memorandum, his private secretary recorded that ‘we must endeavour to induce the thinking working classes, Socialist and others, to regard the Crown, not as a mere figurehead and as an institution which, as they put it, “don’t count”, but as a living power for good, with receptive faculties welcoming information affecting the interests and social well-being of all classes, and ready, not only to sympathise with those questions, but anxious to further their solution.’72 He hoped the King could show these qualities in his conversations with working men.

  The King’s anxieties after his cousin’s enforced abdication were not helped by his sensitivity to his German heritage, and to the fact that his House bore a German name. He came to fear this was a provocation to his people at a time when they were already potentially volatile. By early May 1917 he was contemplating changing the name, and began a consultation process in deep secrecy, among senior privy counsellors and his uncle Arthur, the Duke of Connaught, a close confidant. A Bill had already been published, on 8 March, to deprive the King’s German kinsmen – the Dukes of Albany (a descendant of Queen Victoria) and Cumberland (descended from George III) – of their British titles, for having supported the Kaiser. Acquiring a new family name was a natural next step.

  The Duke of Connaught suggested Tudor-Stewart; but Asquith deplored Tudor with ‘its recollections of Henry VIII and Bloody Mary’ and observed that one Stewart was beheaded and another driven from the Throne.73 Rosebery too felt the names had unfortunate associations and wanted ‘Fitzroy’.74 Stamfordham, having read that Edward III had been known as Edward of Windsor, suggested that; this hit the target, despite objections from Sir Alfred Scott-Gatty, Garter King of Arms. ‘I feel it my duty to point out,’ he told Stamfordham on 25 June, ‘that the surname “Windsor” is the family name of Lord Plymouth and other families both gentle and in humble circumstances’ (the ‘in humble circumstances’ replaces ‘tradesmen’ in the original draft).75 Garter liked ‘Plantagenet’ as it was ‘as far as I know extinct’. Stamfordham felt it was ‘grand’ but, echoing a point of Asquith, ‘too theatrical’.76

  So Windsor it was, and Stamfordham bested Garter by pointing out that Plymouth’s surname was Windsor-Clive. The King confirmed it to Stamfordham on 15 June; it was agreed that Queen Victoria – dead for sixteen years – would be regarded as having founded the new dynasty, so all her descendants then living, unless married females, would bear the new name. On 17 July the Privy Council, attended by several Dominion prime ministers, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lloyd George and Rosebery, approved a Royal Proclamation that ‘Our House and Family shall be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor’, and relinquishing all German titles and honours.77 The Kaiser, hearing the news, is reputed to have said how he looked forward to attending a performance of The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.78

  The King also told the Council that ‘May & I had decided some time ago that our children would be allowed to marry into British families’, which would have a profound effect on the succession.79 This followed a campaign, led by the Daily Mail, demanding that never again should a British prince marry a German bride. He did not understate matters when he told his diary: ‘It was quite a historical occasion.’ It was indeed: so much so that Asquith was livid that the Palace forgot to notify him of the meeting so he could attend.80 German relations of the King living in England, such as his brothers-in-law the Duke
of Teck and Prince Alexander of Teck, relinquished their German titles, becoming the Marquess of Cambridge and the Earl of Athlone, despite Asquith’s having advised that the public might take a creation of several such peers badly (they did not): it was understood that they would not engage in party politics in the Lords, any more than Royal dukes did. Rosebery congratulated Stamfordham for having ‘christened a dynasty … it is really something to be historically proud of. I admire and envy you.’81 A year later the King would tell Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the assistant secretary of the navy in President Wilson’s administration, that ‘I have a number of relations in Germany, but I can tell you frankly that in all my life I have never seen a German gentleman.’82

  IV

  The monarchy may have felt that it had seen off incipient republicanism by a change of name, but the government remained acutely alive to the broader threats of radicalism in wartime. In particular, as Kerensky’s interim administration in Russia succumbed to a Bolshevik coup, worries grew that the Russian example was attracting imitators among workers in Britain. In May 1917, therefore, Lloyd George appointed a commission to inquire into mounting industrial unrest. Having lived through the problems of 1910–1912 he had seen the damage wrought by widespread action during peacetime; to risk a repeat during an all-out war would be fatal.

  Military leaders were similarly concerned. Derby told Haig after a dinner with Robertson and Lloyd George on 25 May that ‘there is no doubt that the Russian revolution has created an unrest that is revolutionary and dangerous. The House of Commons too is in a very nasty mood.’83 Esher had already gauged Derby’s unrest, when the war secretary had visited France a week earlier and had dined with him. ‘Derby arrived late last night,’ he wrote in his diary on 19 May. ‘He is excited and pessimistic over affairs in England. The food supplies, man power, and strikes worry him. The spectre of revolution stands behind his chair.’84 Henderson visited Russia in May and advised Lloyd George that Britain recognise the new Russian administration. The prime minister agreed, but was forced to change his mind to appease the French.

  A hardening of a radical mood in some areas triggered the wave of industrial unrest in the spring of 1917 that the country could ill afford. It suited the government to blame this on food shortages: workers often believed their employers were making a fortune out of the war, despite heavy taxation on high incomes, while they were forced to pay high prices for food, a large proportion of their weekly expenditure. Lloyd George invited a deputation of miners to see him to reassure them personally about food supplies. He was by then searching for a more sympathetic figure than Devonport to be food controller, or at least someone who would inspire the confidence of working people. He considered appointing a leader of the cooperative wholesale movement; but offered Devonport’s job to Robert Smillie of the MFGB, a vocal anti-conscription man, hoping it would shut Smillie up; but he declined, causing Lloyd George to appoint Rhondda.

  But morale remained low because of the failure to achieve a breakthrough in the war. Pacifists especially felt justified when the usual mild triumphalism of the heavily censored press about the Battle of Arras – Britain’s share of the Nivelle offensive, which opened on 9 April – soon turned to a grim, familiar reality when stalemate reimposed itself. Elsewhere on the left, radicals in the union movement were agitating, constantly on the alert for the erosion of the privileges of their skilled members. Engineering workers started to fear their pay was falling behind inflation. Isolated strikes began in Lancashire from mid-March, over women at a Rochdale factory being asked to do skilled work for which no dilution had been negotiated. The firm sacked men who objected, which was illegal; but the Ministry of Munitions dreaded a confrontation with owners as well as workers. Lloyd George warned colleagues on 6 April that ‘he had received indications from several sources of a very considerable and highly-organised labour movement with seditious tendencies’ in major industrial centres.85 He conceded some workers had ‘genuine and legitimate grievances’, and were ripe for exploitation by ‘violent anarchists’.

  Within days unrest broke out amongst members of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, over the abolition of the Trade Card Scheme. The Manpower Board had instituted this in November 1916 to allow union leaders to give cards of exemption from enlistment to some members, but it had been discontinued when the combing-out of the munitions industry was ordered. Engineers in Barrow went on strike over the cutting-down of a bonus system, and the government gave them an ultimatum to return to work within twenty-four hours or face arrest; the ballot to return succeeded by only 1,623 to 1,200 even then.86 The King, on his prime minister’s advice, sent exhortations to workers in Barrow coupled with expressions of confidence that they would do everything they could to play their part in the war effort; and in early May he and the Queen undertook a week-long tour of shipyards, mills and munitions factories in the north-west.

  By 3 May 60,000 men were striking in Lancashire, and engineering workers elsewhere followed them until within a week 200,000 were out. The strikes were unofficial: on 11 May the government issued a warning notice urging ‘all loyal citizens to resume work immediately’, adding that ‘all persons who incite to any stoppage of work on munitions are guilty of an offence under the Defence of the Realm Regulations, the penalty for which is penal servitude for life or such less punishment as may be awarded.’87 Despite the need to win the war, and draconian penalties for industrial action, in 1917 a total of 5.6 million days would be lost to strikes.88

  Lloyd George put Addison in charge of negotiations. He had the good fortune of having the strikers’ official leaders behind him, since they believed that extremists who disdained them even more than their employers were behind the unrest. There was hostility among the wider public to the strikers, who were regarded as betraying the country, and by 15 May some were drifting back to work. Despite having delegated matters to Addison, Lloyd George intervened, deciding on 17 May to prosecute the unofficial strike leaders. Seven were arrested and sent to Brixton the next day, and charged under DORA. Shop stewards led the strikes locally, twenty-two of whom the government eventually ordered to be arrested.

  Within government circles opinions were divided on how to handle the strikers. The prime minister was determined to divide the working class against the militants; but Sir James Stevenson, director of area organisation at the Ministry of Munitions and former joint managing director of the Johnnie Walker whisky distillery, sought to tone down Lloyd George’s aggression towards the workers. Stevenson said many saw a conspiracy between the government and the owners of capital, with the latter exploiting the war to use cheap labour that it hoped to retain, at the expense of better-paid skilled operatives, when peace came. Negotiations continued, with the government dropping the trade card scheme and agreeing to release the seven men from jail if they gave an earnest of good behaviour. Despite Lloyd George’s bellicosity the government had no choice but to concede almost all the strikers’ demands. However Smith, the Attorney General, threatened that the full might of the law would be brought down on the men if they stopped work again. The strike was settled on 19 May.

  Although Addison had been instrumental in reaching an agreement with the engineering workers’ leader, Robert Brownlie, Lloyd George’s manipulation of it threatened to destabilise the situation again. When the concordat was published by Downing Street it removed all mention of Addison, saying Lloyd George had settled the problem: which was untrue. Addison, who was completely loyal to Lloyd George and had done just what he had been asked, was livid. ‘God knows,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘that I of all men have never been backward in giving LG all the credit I could and that he deserves, and I hate the idea of trying to advertise myself, but this business discredits the whole ministry as well as myself.’89 William Sutherland, Lloyd George’s press officer, who would distinguish himself as one of the leading hawkers of honours, removed Addison’s name. The prime minister, who badly needed Addison’s competence as well as his loyalty, professed outrag
e at this distortion of the truth. However, it showed how those around Lloyd George – whom detractors branded his political parasites – did business on his behalf, usually following direction from the top. Such was Addison’s clout that he forced Lloyd George to make an explanatory statement in the Commons on 21 May in which he confirmed the credit was his subordinate’s.

  The Leeds Convention of socialists, on 3 June, gave further evidence of the militant feelings of some in the working class. It was held, against a backdrop of industrial unrest in the city at the time, ‘to hail the Russian revolution and to organise the British democracy to follow Russia’, and called for workers and soldiers’ soviets in Britain.90 MacDonald proposed the resolution praising Russia, and the thousand or so delegates came not just from the Labour Party, the unions and the Union of Democratic Control, but also the women’s movement and the Plebs League, a Marxist–syndicalist ‘educational’ organisation that sought to radicalise working people. The socialists had trouble finding a venue, as after ‘patriotic pressure’ the Leeds Albert Hall refused to accommodate them; the meeting went ahead at the Coliseum when the city council, also under ‘pressure’, decided it would be wrong to suppress freedom of speech.