Staring at God

by Simon Heffer

  Dalziel spoke in the debate, mainly, he claimed, because any further silence would have been misinterpreted. He denied that, having acquired the Chronicle, he had sought to ‘muzzle its independence’, though the content of the paper had rapidly suggested otherwise.41 He claimed it had been sold because of the previous owner’s ill health, and that he had bought it largely to prevent a group of Tories coming in and taking it over: an unlikely story given the refusal to sell to Beaverbrook. He denied knowing anything about Beaverbrook’s approach or, indeed, Leverhulme’s. He denied, too, that he was subservient to anyone, or that he had been guilty of impropriety – ‘my public life is an open book’.42 Lloyd George would mark his public service with a peerage in 1921.

  This deal exemplified how far Lloyd George, sundered from mainstream Liberals and party funds, would go to acquire new means of influence, and new rich friends. Maurice was forced to resign, as was Robert Donald, the editor who had appointed him, even though Lloyd George had given him a part-time job under Beaverbrook earlier that year as director of propaganda to neutral countries, and Scott had regarded him as ‘a kind of scout for Lloyd George’.43 Donald’s decision to hire Maurice appears to have signed his own death warrant; he made it quite clear through his newspaper that he no longer trusted Lloyd George, and so Lloyd George showed he did not trust him. The torrent of criticism the Chronicle had poured on the government about manpower shortages and Irish policy became, like criticism of war policy, a thing of the past. The Chronicle would be slavishly loyal when the election came. On 4 November Beaverbrook resigned to have an operation on his throat, infected by a bad tooth, and the Ministry of Information wound down: his successor, Lord Downham, served two months before it was abolished.

  Although Northcliffe’s influence was manifestly on the wane, with Lloyd George now preparing to assert himself as the man who had won the war and far less troubled than before about the conceit of a newspaper proprietor, others remained apprehensive of Northcliffe’s power. On 7 November, in a debate on the Ministry of Information, Carson attacked Northcliffe, aware that he had been trying to get Lloyd George to make him a formal delegate to the peace conference. ‘I am quite alive to the fact,’ he said,

  that it is almost high treason to say a word against Lord Northcliffe. I know his power and that he does not hesitate to exercise it to try to drive anybody out of any office or a public position if they incur his royal displeasure. But as at my time of life neither office nor its emoluments nor anything connected with Governments, or indeed public life, makes the slightest difference, and the only thing I care about is really the interests of decent administration, I venture to incur even the possibility of the odium of this great trust owner, who monopolises in his own person so great a part of the Press of this country, and has always for himself a ready-made claque to flatter him and to run any policies for him that he thinks best in his own interests.44

  Carson spoke for a political class sick and tired of Northcliffe’s imagining he had some sort of mandate; he was determined to show the press baron that he could not behave in that way without criticism. The last straw had been an attack in the Northcliffe press on Milner, which Carson not only considered unfair but which he thought ‘indecent’, given Northcliffe’s official propaganda work.45 Milner, at Versailles, had given an interview to which Northcliffe objected, and a leading article had quoted a telegram from someone in France claiming the interview had done ‘great damage’ there. Carson believed Northcliffe himself had sent the wire. ‘I think it is really time to put an end to this kind of thing,’ he added, saying the ‘best elements’ of the public ‘resent’ such conduct. For those in any doubt, Carson said: ‘Everybody knows who has been in public life or in public office that the moment Lord Northcliffe’s displeasure is incurred, from that moment onwards a kind of man-hunt commences until he drives anybody whom he looks upon as an adversary out of office.’

  His peroration was ferocious: the reasons for these

  attacks from an official of the Government upon Lord Milner [were] to drive him out of his office … In order that Lord Northcliffe may get it or may get into the War Cabinet, so that he may be present at the Peace Conference, whenever it comes. The whole thing is a disgrace to public life in England and a disgrace of journalism. I know perfectly well how difficult it is to ever criticise the Press. I know perfectly well the reward you reap for it. Thank God, I never cared what they said about me. I have never cared, but I do hope that Members of this House, whether they agree with Lord Milner or whether they agree with any other Minister, will see that, at all events, at a crisis like this fair-play, fair criticism, honest dealing, and decent life are necessary.46

  The furthest Stanley Baldwin, the spokesman in the debate for the government that had availed itself of Northcliffe’s services, would go to defend its propagandist was to say that with the war ending the ministry for which he had worked was ‘not only moribund, but in articulo mortis and … defunct.’47

  Meanwhile, Lloyd George continued to lay his plans for an early election. As soon as the German position began to crumble those close to the prime minister entered discussions with supporters of Asquith about their possible place in a new coalition, after the election. On 26 September Murray of Elibank, the former Liberal chief whip, acted as go-between to offer Asquith the Woolsack again, with two cabinet jobs for his followers – Runciman and Samuel were suggested – and six junior jobs too, in return for supporting the coalition and agreeing to an immediate election. Asquith refused.

  Not all of Lloyd George’s usual supporters were happy to hear rumours that a poll was being rushed forward. Scott turned the fire of the Manchester Guardian on the man who would call it, his friend Lloyd George. ‘Such a Government, so elected,’ he wrote on 1 November, ‘would have no real authority for the future. It would have selected a moment when the country was, as it were, disarmed and all political parties but its own at a disadvantage and in disarray, in order to seize power.’48 That was remarkably acute. The next day Lloyd George wrote officially to Law to put the proposal to him, and he accepted. On 5 November the King, at one with the Manchester Guardian, reluctantly agreed to dissolve Parliament, ‘being against it before’ a long discussion with his prime minister, and Law and Lloyd George began to debate tactics.49

  III

  To its credit, and thanks to the dynamism and high-mindedness of a few ministers, the coalition had begun to seek to shape the world after the war long before the conflict entered its decisive phases. The reform of the franchise was the first and most obvious example; but it was also accepted that there was an acute need to rebuild Britain – not because of war damage, of which there was relatively little, but because of the shattering of families and the need to replace decaying and substandard pre-war infrastructure. It would be enough of a problem to deal with demobilisation and to place back in civilian life all those returning from combat when hostilities ended: but there needed to be better preparation of the nation’s human resources if Britain were to have a prosperous and successful future. So the rebuilding would have to be of society as well as of physical structures.

  In developing the nation’s human capital, education would be the key. Even in the depths of the war, in the first days of the Somme, the Lords had discussed planning for this, aware of the enormous shortcomings the existing system had, and the waste of talent it perpetuated. Haldane had introduced a motion on 12 July 1916 ‘to call attention to the training of the nation and to the necessity of preparing for the future’.50 He understood perhaps better than anyone how superior the education systems in some of Britain’s competitor nations, notably Germany and America, were. German working-class children left school at fourteen rather than thirteen; and most went into training or apprenticeship for four years, rather than drifting into the unskilled labouring that was the lot of all too many working-class British boys. Middle-class children stayed at school for between two and four more years, and then some went to university. The main weakness in th
e British system, as Haldane admitted, was that it was almost impossible for working-class children to get to a university. In that respect at least Britain was ahead of Germany, since a small number of scholarships and bursaries were available; but it was not good enough.

  The scale of the problem was immense. In England in 1916 there had been 2,750,000 boys and girls aged twelve to sixteen. Around 1,100,000 left school at thirteen. Slightly more left at fourteen. Only 250,000 attended proper secondary schools, often for just a year or two. Of the 5,850,000 younger people aged between sixteen and twenty-five, only 93,000 attended full-time courses, most of short duration. Haldane had pointed out the massive advantage to nations that took education and training seriously.51 He had said: ‘We have to do our utmost to prepare the future generation, to prepare it intellectually, morally, and physically, to endure the strain which it will have to face … other nations have been coming up and devoting themselves with an assiduity and a science which are in excess in some respects of our own; and it is from that excess of assiduity on their part that the danger to us arises. We must see to it that we are not caught unprepared in the struggle. The reforms which are necessary are reforms which will involve the direction of energy.’52

  Haldane’s ideas and vision had a profound effect on H. A. L. Fisher, president of the Board of Education and, before that, vice chancellor of the University of Sheffield. He was a high-minded Liberal intellectual, imbued with Arnoldian ideals of sweetness and light, but also impeccably connected to Britain’s intellectual aristocracy. The son of H. W. Fisher, the historian, he was a first cousin of Virginia Woolf; his sister Adeline was married to Ralph Vaughan Williams; and another sister married first the eminent legal historian F. W. Maitland and then Sir Francis Darwin, botanist son of the naturalist.

  Fisher wanted to abolish the half-time system, under which children in industrial areas such as Lancashire and Yorkshire could work provided they spent a certain number of hours in education. He wanted children under fourteen to concentrate entirely on academic work; something to which the trades unions put up enormous resistance, and which brought complaints from agriculture, under severe pressure because of manpower shortages. He was also determined to create county education committees with the vision to expand the reach and content of the education system. His first great initiative had been to persuade Parliament in March 1918 to raise the school-leaving age to fourteen. He proceeded on the basis that it was all very well for Britain to win the war, as by September 1918 it appeared it would; but capitalising on victory would require a revolution in attitudes.

  While stressing the importance of training minds by teaching the humanities, he specifically wanted more scientific training and education, and a receptiveness to new ideas: he also wondered ‘how many Watts’s, Kelvins, and Darwins have been lost in the vast mass of untrained talent which the children of the working classes afford. Our greatest mistake in this country has been in concentrating upon the education and training of the well-to-do … for the child of the workman what provision is there unless he has a very exceptional and keen father? Why, none whatever … 90 per cent of our population have not that education which is required if we are to make the best use of our available talent.’53 Haldane had wanted the planning to start in 1916, but it had taken Fisher until 1918 to finish laying the ground for Haldane’s vision of ‘continuation schools’ that working-class children might attend after the age of thirteen, and more provision of university places.54

  On 13 March 1918 Fisher outlined some of his vision. ‘There was a time when every elementary school teacher was expected to know every subject contained in the curriculum equally well or equally badly. There was a time when schools were subject to payment by results, when the results seldom went beyond a mechanical efficiency in the three Rs. We have got beyond that stage. Our teachers are encouraged to specialise, our curriculum is wider and more varied, we no longer rely upon the mechanical test of payment by results.’55 It was estimated that more than a million disabled children were denied a proper education; Fisher’s aim was not just to have the state provide opportunities for them, but also to seek to improve public health so there might be fewer to begin with; and for healthy children there would be a strong emphasis on physical education. He was also anxious to make parents take a closer interest in their children’s education, and to support a school’s efforts to extend learning opportunities.

  Fisher did not hold back. ‘The object of the Bill is to provide the greatest possible number of outlets for talent of all description. We are proposing in the Bill to make it an obligation, resting upon the local, education authority, to provide secondary education for all those pupils who are fit to receive it.’ This would be accomplished by ‘the provision of central schools, of higher elementary schools, of junior technical schools, and of junior commercial schools.’ That was not all. ‘The fact that we are, in addition, proposing a scheme of compulsory part-time education for the whole adolescent population between fourteen and sixteen, subject to certain exceptions, is not incompatible with the operation of the scheme for the selection and development of special talent.’56 He said that, eventually, the cost of raising the school leaving age and of providing this additional education would be under £10 million a year, to be met jointly from taxes and local rates; about a day and a half’s expenditure on the war. He also proposed increased teachers’ salaries and central funding for schools, wanted local authorities empowered to provide nursery schools, and the creation of a pension scheme for secondary and technical school teachers.

  The new policy was informed by Fisher’s belief that the adolescent mind was highly susceptible to influence – as the relentlessly rising juvenile crime figures proved – and in education the young would be exposed to more good than bad influences. If someone went into work at fourteen, ‘continuation classes’ of around eight hours a week until the age of sixteen or eighteen would continue to instil some learning beyond the school leaving age. ‘When it is proposed in the Bill to give to these children of poorer parents some measure of the moral guidance and direction which are universally claimed for the children of richer homes, I confidently claim that I shall have behind me the whole moral sense of the community.’57

  Fisher was no utilitarian, but believed in education for the purposes of edification and development of character. He ended, though, on a practical note:

  I ask then whether the education which is given to the great mass of our citizens is adequate to the new, serious, and enduring liabilities which the development of this great world war creates for our Empire, or to the new civic burdens which we are imposing upon millions of new voters? I say it is not adequate. Any competent judge of facts in this country must agree with me. I believe it is our duty, here and now, to improve it, and I hold that if we allow our vision to be blurred by a catalogue of passing inconveniences we shall not only lose a golden occasion but fail in our great trust to posterity.58

  There was also a recognition that Britain was entering into a new era of stiff competition with other nations, and that a better-educated workforce was economically essential. The Liberal MP Francis Acland said in the debate on the second reading: ‘Industries that do not want workers with a broader outlook, a better trained character and an increased power of applying their brains, not only to the particular industry concerned but to the ordinary problems of citizenship, are not industries that we shall be able to encourage or even to keep in this country. Undoubtedly there are difficult times coming. We simply cannot afford to let our industries lack the better mental equipment which all those engaged in them will obtain if the main provisions of this Bill are carried out.’59

  Fisher’s Bill was regarded as the first step in a programme of extending educational opportunities to those without the means to pay for them. There were predictable objections. Unionists protested that it could result in the over-education of many young people, who would find insufficient vacancies for those with their accomplishments. It was neither unde
rstood nor countenanced that the expansion of the educated population would create the prosperity that created higher-calibre work opportunities. Some MPs complained about the cost, not least because Fisher and his supporters intended his reforms to lead to more people going to university, and not merely the children of the privileged classes. Acland said: ‘We want surely such a development of our scholarship system, including maintenance grants in the later years, as shall make us drop altogether the expression “educational ladder” out of our vocabulary, so that we may speak instead of the educational highway.’60 He also outlined the aspirations beyond the Bill: ‘We want the bringing of our private schools for all classes, the rich as well as those less well off, under the effective supervision of the Board of Education. We want a simplification of our system of examinations. We want great changes and developments in the methods in which we teach certain subjects, particularly science and modern languages.’

  As well as Unionist MPs’ concerns about the cost, many working-class people worried about the cost of their children’s delaying their entry to the workforce – as they had about every education reform since 1870. This was partly why the legislation for Fisher’s plans, which affected 95 per cent of children of school age and which the War Cabinet had sanctioned in February 1917, had taken so long to get through Parliament. Yet, as Fisher knew, the working class were also, paradoxically, the great advocates of the measure, because they were also aware of the chance it would give their children to lead better lives, in better jobs, than their parents, and to escape the drudgery of domestic service or unskilled labour: he categorised his Bill as a measure to guarantee the rights of young people.