Staring at God

by Simon Heffer

On 12 November Lloyd George addressed a Liberal Party meeting in which he promised social and economic reform: but his dependence on the Conservatives to remain prime minister tied his hands. The most memorable line from his address, often misquoted, was ‘we must have habitations fit for the heroes who have won the war’, and no repeat of the situation after 1815 when an opportunity for reform and progress had been passed up, causing years of discontent and unrest.112 He refined his slogan at Wolverhampton on 23 November, in a speech in which he also advertised his desire to give grants of land to ex-soldiers to make them part of an agricultural revival, and to maintain the contribution of women to the economy, when he said: ‘What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.’113

  Also on the day after the Armistice, Addison told the Commons that in accordance with a plan devised by a committee chaired by Montagu, ‘industrial requirements’ would govern the demobilisation of those heroes.114 The Army had been divided into forty-two trade groups in order of importance to the civilian economy, and the most valuable would be released first. This would turn out not to be the brilliant idea the government thought, because of divided responsibilities: the War Office dealt with a man until he left the colours, and the Ministry of Labour inherited the problem thereafter. It was up to firms to tell the Army of their needs: Addison said it was thought that 60 per cent of men had jobs awaiting them.

  A pamphlet was being prepared to explain how demobilisation would work, and Addison set out the basic procedure for each individual:

  A man is sent primarily to a place that is called his dispersal station, which is near his home. There he receives a protection certificate, a railway warrant home, a cash payment of his war gratuity and an out-of-work donation policy, which lasts in the case of the soldiers twelve months and covers twenty-six weeks of unemployment, with benefit at the rate I have mentioned. He will receive the war gratuity. The precise method of the payment of that will be announced shortly. I believe it is likely that it will be paid in four weekly instalments. The man will receive twenty-eight days’ furlough when he reaches his dispersal station, and will then receive pay and ration allowance during that time, and the separation allowance will also continue during that period.115

  He added that any officer or suitably qualified man ‘dislocated’ from his normal employment as a result of the war would be able to secure a permanent career in the civil service, the offer to remain open for a year after demobilisation.116 One disadvantaged group were former officers promoted from the ranks, who lacked the private means that before the war had usually gone with such status, and for many in this bracket the immediate post-war period of adjustment and resettlement would be a particular struggle.

  There was some expertise in Whitehall at dealing with wounded officers who had been invalided out, for whom the Appointments Department at the Ministry of Labour had been set up. Contrary to the myth that psychological damage was disregarded, the department issued a pamphlet advising on how to handle the mental strain that followed an experience of trauma. It included advice ‘that he should be encouraged to read – good novels, poetry, or whatever his taste leads him to. Afterwards he should have the opportunity of listening to lectures on natural history, poultry farming, travel, or anything that interests. By such means his brain would be kept going, and his idle hours safeguarded.’117

  The department would, once the man had recovered sufficiently to contemplate a career, ‘assume something like a parental control of him.’ Using a nationwide network, it would then steer the man towards further education, training or a career. With the coming of peace the demands on such services would be enormous, and the system would not always cope. However, charities sprang up devoted to the rehabilitation of those maimed by war, with rural centres (including one on a 1, 000-acre estate near Andover) acting as what one charity called ‘a bridge between the hospital and civil life’, where men could be trained for a more active life under medical supervision; and a Ministry of Pensions Voluntary Fund was established to make grants and loans for those who wished to start their own businesses.118

  The war had given birth to a cult of bureaucracy, which would flourish in the peace. The day after the Armistice a huge network of committees and advisory boards, composed of ‘men and women of mature experience and distinction in affairs’, was set up to advise the minister of reconstruction on all aspects of the procurement of raw materials and the rebuilding of Britain.119 They would advise too on disposal of war surplus and on the stimulation of new trades, especially in engineering, to exploit technologies developed during the war to the service of the civilian population.

  The immediate domestic difficulty – since it would take some time to demobilise soldiers – was what to do with 3 million munitions operatives whose services were no longer required, and who were working in between 40,000 and 50,000 firms that would need to find new customers. A week after the Armistice, Churchill told Lloyd George that ‘although I am going very slow, and gaining time in every direction possible, I cannot help unloading from now onwards a continuous broadening stream of men and women workers. Others go on short time, & all lose their high wartime wages & fall to a mere pittance & consequent discontent.’120 The workers were far from stupid. ‘Workmen say freely that if the Government were ready to spend £8,000,000 a day for an indefinite period to win the war, they ought not to grudge a much smaller sum to carry the country over the transition period.’

  A period of severe economic dislocation was beginning; the eventual return of fighting men would make it worse. Refashioning a peacetime economy was not the work of an afternoon, and both Liberals and Unionists saw the Labour Party ready to exploit the hardships many families would feel as former breadwinners searched for new work and returning soldiers hoped to resume their previous occupations. Some did: many did not. The government pinned its hopes of industrial and civil calm on its as yet vague plans for reconstruction, which would require an army of men to build new homes and commercial buildings, as well as for the new infrastructure of roads and renewed railways to support them. The forthcoming election campaign ought to have been the moment not just to spell these plans out in detail, but to outline how they would be accomplished. The question of execution of plans would come eventually and, in some cases, either incompletely or not at all.

  It was confirmed on 14 November that the general election would be held exactly a month later. Labour, armed with a new constitution and a belief that the expanded electorate would supply it with an army of voters, had long contained a strong faction, based on its National Executive Committee, that wished to leave the coalition. The parliamentary party, who saw membership of the coalition as the best means of influencing the post-war settlement, wished to stay. An emergency conference was called, which featured a demand by George Bernard Shaw that his fellow socialists should tell Lloyd George ‘nothing doing’. By a margin of almost three to one the party voted to fight the election as an opposition, leaving the coalition once Parliament was dissolved. Clynes, food controller since July when Rhondda had died of pneumonia brought on by overwork (and who had won some popularity by taking bacon and ham off the ration soon after his appointment, thanks to the success of the pig-breeding programme), resigned on 22 November to help lead his party. Henderson was optimistic about Labour’s chances because, as he told Scott, ‘they had existing trade union organisation in every town.’121 Labour would field 361 candidates, 140 of whom were proposed by new local parties formed after the passing of the constitution; the others were union sponsored, the largest number – 51 – by the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain.122

  Many MPs, like their Sovereign, regarded the election as unpleasantly opportunist. Sir Leo Chiozza Money, a junior shipping minister, resigned because of the decision, stating his concerns about the ability of many men in uniform to vote. But it was also believed there was too much haste between the Armistice and the poll for the enormous considerations of the peace, and the challenges it offered, to be prop
erly debated and considered by the electorate. Sir Leo – a gifted and influential economist who had been Lloyd George’s parliamentary private secretary – believed the programme of reforms which the prime minister had outlined would not placate a population he believed more afflicted by unrest than the government realised.

  Money deplored that a coalition party from which Labour had chosen to exclude itself would fight the election: ‘Above all, I fear this: That the results of an election, such as this may be, will be to exclude from this House such a proper and full representation of Labour as to cause Labour to seek for other than Parliamentary means of expression. I say that that is a danger for the country which we have all got to face. The issue must be faced sooner or later. If we will not face it in this House, we may be quite sure it will be faced out of the House, and we shall have to face an extra-Parliamentary means of expression.’123 Money argued that the working classes simply would not accept such conditions as they had lived and worked in before the war. He doubted the government’s commitment to continue free trade; he believed it intended to postpone Home Rule for Ireland indefinitely. He saw both policies as against the will of the people, and he could not be a part of it.

  Lloyd George made one last attempt to achieve Liberal unity, by inviting Asquith yet again to become Lord Chancellor; but he refused once more, and other Liberals declined to join the coalition. Asquith did tell Lloyd George, who asked to see him just before the election, that he would be happy to be a delegate to the peace conference; Lloyd George refused to give him an answer, and never did. The King, too, wrote to his prime minister to ask him to take Asquith with ‘his worth as a lawyer, a statesman, and a man of clear dispassionate judgment’ to Versailles, but his letter went unanswered.124 In an audience of the King on 25 November Lloyd George prevaricated, saying nothing could be done until after the election – unless Asquith joined the ministry. After that, Lloyd George was predictably evasive. What he could not tell the King was about his loathing of the idea of sharing the limelight with his predecessor – for Lloyd George was being depicted in the campaign as the man who won the war – or to give him such standing in the Versailles process that it strengthened his credibility as an alternative prime minister. It was typical, though, that shortly after Asquith’s death in 1928 he should claim, with breathtaking dishonesty but desperate to polish his reputation, that he had offered Asquith a place on the delegation.

  The prime minister had told Hankey – who was much in favour of Asquith – that he could not ask men such as ‘Bonar Law, or Balfour, or Barnes, who had been loyal to him, to give place to Asquith.’125 Hankey and the King conspired to have Lloyd George change his mind, but they failed: the King told Hankey that ‘Lloyd George will say that the King wants Asquith to go to the peace conference, because he is his friend. But the truth is I want him to go for the good of the nation … and to make for unity.’126 Hankey noted that the King ‘hardly concealed his personal mistrust of Lloyd George … he thinks that if Ll G wins the election he will not last more than 15 months; that Labour is not ready to form a Govt; and that Asquith is certain to get back before long.’ It would not quite happen that way.

  Dropping in to debrief Stamfordham, Hankey endured another torrent of abuse of Lloyd George, this time for what the courtier regarded as his shocking breach of manners in absenting himself from the King’s message to Parliament the previous Tuesday, to mark the Armistice. Hankey tried to convince Stamfordham that Lloyd George ‘had really been seedy’ with the flu – two months after he had had it in Manchester – but was told: ‘well, I suppose one expects Lloyd George to cry off things that one would not expect in another man.’ With judicious understatement Hankey observed that ‘he clearly does not like or trust Ll G.’ The next day he noted that ‘the PM was very hostile about Asquith and annoyed with the King for wanting him to be at the peace conference.’127

  Another factor in the electoral equation was the possibility of candidates representing ex-servicemen. The National Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers, started in March 1917 during the row about recalling the medically unfit, had run a disabled ex-soldier in a by-election in Liverpool in June 1918 against Lord Stanley, heir to the Derby earldom, on a platform of better pensions, more rehabilitation for disabled ex-servicemen and a repeal of the Act reviewing exemptions. For a time Derby, who knew he was the target of the protest, thought of withdrawing his son from the field. He felt that ‘the opposition of the discharged soldiers is much more serious’ than was realised.128 When it was feared a veteran would oppose Stanley, the War Cabinet decided to exempt wounded and discharged men who had served overseas, and further changes to the Act were announced before the poll: Stanley, who did not campaign as he was abroad on active service, won by 2,224 votes to 794. During the autumn the Directorate of Intelligence in the Home Office detected a move by ‘extremists’ to take over the federation, but feared their populism would make them ‘a very numerous and dangerous body’.129

  Another veterans’ group – the Silver Badge Party, named after the badge ex-servicemen could wear to show they had served, and thus avoid the obloquy of women armed with white feathers – ran on similar lines to the federation, but had policies such as equal pay for women and the deportation of enemy aliens that transcended veterans’ demands. When nominations closed on 4 December there were thirty-one veterans’ candidates, mostly federation men. Twenty had been wounded. As many candidates again withdrew before nominations closed; this was the first election at which a £150 deposit was required, forfeited if the candidate received less than an eighth of the vote, and it had a deterrent effect.

  Many Liberals, like Money, regarded Lloyd George’s desire to call an election immediately, and to issue what Asquith, in a speech at Huddersfield on 28 November, called a ‘coupon’ – a letter of endorsement signed by the prime minister and Law to candidates supporting their coalition – an outrageous act of exploitative cynicism.130 Asquith had told Liberals on 18 November that he considered it ‘a blunder and a calamity’ to have the ‘tumult and turmoil’ of an election; he wanted the soldiers home first so their voices could be heard.131 Auckland Geddes announced arrangements to ensure soldiers could vote by post; those not in France or Belgium could appoint proxies (though, as it turned out, few did). Samuel called the election timing ‘indefensible’: ‘They allowed the people no interval for reflection, or for the consideration of policies for the future.’132 The parties were in various states of disorganisation; the Unionists the least so, which boded well for the coalition’s re-election. Indeed, it was mainly his awareness of the concerns of the Asquithians and of Henderson about their organisations’ fitness for an election that impelled Lloyd George to want one so much.

  The idea of the ‘coupon’ had come to him in the summer: as a way of ensuring that those Liberals who backed him, and Unionists who backed his administration, would be endorsed; and what was good for them was good for him. By denying so many Asquithian Liberals the coupon, and with Labour going its own way, the Unionists would have a substantial majority in the new House. Asquith still controlled the official Liberal Party, from which anyone seeking the coupon would be excommunicated; in any case, Lloyd George took the way men had voted in the Maurice debate as a key indicator of reliability, as he admitted in a speech at Wolverhampton on 23 November. Therefore he struggled to find credible candidates; which would leave him as prime minister but reliant on Unionists to keep him there.

  He accused his opponents on the Maurice question of having run a ‘parliamentary conspiracy to overthrow a Government that was in the midst of a crisis while wrestling for victory.’133 That, at least, was his justification in isolating them. Asquith was appalled at yet another distortion of the truth, and in his Huddersfield speech said of his own role in the debate that ‘there is no act in the whole of my parliamentary life … for which I am less repentant and ashamed.’134 Eventually 541 coupons were issued for the 602 English, Scottish and Welsh constituencies; those w
ho received them were 364 Conservatives, 159 Liberals and 18 National Democrats.135 The latter were a working-class, anti-socialist party. In another respect it would be a quite different election from any held before. On 21 November the Royal Assent was given for the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918, settling that as well as being allowed to vote in the election, women could stand as candidates in it.

  Lloyd George and Law’s joint programme was published on 18 November, followed by various policy documents during the campaign. Asquith announced his the same day, claiming a direct political descent from Gladstone, and calling himself a ‘liberal … without any prefix or suffix’.136 He wanted to remove the state, which had taken over the lives of the people in the preceding four years, from those lives as swiftly as possible. Rothermere told Churchill the coalition programme was ‘not sufficiently advanced’; he thought Lloyd George’s natural radical instincts were ‘being held back by reactionary Tories.’137 Beaverbrook felt the apportionment of the coupon unduly sectarian, and used the Express to say so: he pledged to support candidates who had behaved well during the war, irrespective of whether the coalition endorsed them, despite his own recent service in that administration, and his close friendship with Law. Law seems to have taken a long view of his party’s participation, seeing that its representation would be big enough to ensure its future independence of a coalition, when the time came. The Liberal Party would be permanently split, and incapable of governing.

  Churchill was angry with Beaverbrook, scenting betrayal; Beaverbrook replied that ‘it is unwise and wrong to ignore the public claims, based on service to the State, of many candidates who will not give all the Coalition pledges, and I claim the right to speak freely on this and other matters … where there is a good man outside those ranks, I intend to support him.’138 On 31 October he had told Mrs Asquith that ‘you really are mistaken in the view that I am strongly opposed to your husband in any inveterate manner. I have a great respect for Mr Asquith and there are few men in whom I would rather trust.’139 He explained his support for Lloyd George in 1916 as having been provoked not by Asquith, but by ‘the kind of barnacles, especially in the general staff, which had affixed themselves to his administration.’ Beaverbrook claimed the outcome had justified Lloyd George’s scepticism about Robertson and the War Office. ‘I regretted the denouement as much as did the present prime minister; but we feel that we were battling for the National existence.’ He hoped Asquith’s advice ‘will be taken on the conclusion of peace’: hopes in which he, and Asquith too, would be disappointed. Mrs Asquith replied, with her customary disregard for whatever support her husband and his friends might have hoped for from the Express, that ‘Sir H Wilson, Ll G, Northcliffe, you and your lot nearly landed us in the greatest military disaster that ever happened to English soldiers.’140