Mr Balfour's Poodle

by Roy Jenkins

  1 Why the offer was regarded as attractive is not clear, for the Cardiff District seat, for which D. A. Thomas (later Lord Rhondda) then became the candidate, was, on paper at any rate, a much less safe Liberal division than Lloyd George’s own Caernarvon District. At the second 1910 election it was lost to the Unionists by a majority of 300.

  2 In one way and another the Germans figured very prominently in Unionist propaganda at this election. They were portrayed as dangerously aggressive in order to justify an attack on the Government’s naval policy, and as contented and well-fed in order to justify a policy of tariff reform.

  1 The political attention paid to Grimsby at this time was remarkable. At the second 1910 election, after Balfour had addressed an audience of 10,000 there during the day, Mr. Churchill, who had spoken in Cheshire that evening, travelled across by special train, stopping to have Balfour’s speech supplied to him in instalments en route, and delivered a rumbustious reply, to a well-filled meeting, at midnight.

  1 Beaconsfield, Cranbrook, and Salisbury.

  2 With the object of swinging the Roman Catholic vote.

  3 When the usual sessional order was moved on the first day of the new Parliament, a Unionist amendment to restrict it to peers who were also Lords-Lieutenant of counties was proposed, and this was accepted by Asquith and carried without a division.

  1 Lloyd George replied to this, characteristically but effectively, by saying that he ‘thought the Carpenter of Galilee had more to do with the best and highest element of civilization’. (Annual Register for 1909, p. 269.)

  2 Although not quite to the extent that Austen Chamberlain suggested when he wrote to Balfour after the election and said: ‘Tariff Reform was our trump card. Where we won, we won on and by Tariff Reform. Even where we lost, it was the only subject in our repertoire about which people really cared.’ (Petrie, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 242.) Austen’s loyalty to his family cause, combined perhaps with his Liberal Unionism, made him under-estimate the effect of true Tory scepticism, of blank, negative opposition, as a vote-winning force for the Unionist Party.

  1 Even in 1868 Gladstone had a majority of only 116.

  2 This enabled the Unionists, when the issue of Home Rule came more to the fore (and when the second 1910 election had confirmed the verdict of the first), to develop the constitutional sophistry of saying that no Government should attempt to carry through a structural change in the relations of the four countries—such as the setting up of a separate Parliament for Ireland––without the support of a majority of the electors of the ‘predominant partner.’ It was an ingenious, if not very creditable, attempt to erect a sort of Anglo-Saxon veto to replace the veto of the peers which had then been destroyed.

  1 A list of the seats which in January, 1910, produced a result different from that of 1906 is given in appendix B.

  2 The Unionists appeared to have been successful in convincing the dockyard workers that they would build more warships, even if not in convincing the rest of the country that more warships were necessary.

  1 Although it is perhaps worth noting that in the second 1910 election, when Lloyd George was not at Grimsby and when the South-West may have been better served by Opposition orators, there were Unionist gains in Grimsby and in three of the Devon divisions.

  1 1843–1911. Liberal member for Chelsea, 1868–86, and for the Forest of Dean, 1892–1911. President of the Local Government Board from 1882 until cited as co-respondent in a divorce case in 1885.

  2 1868–1935. Later 1st Lord Dalziel. Member for Kirkcaldy Burghs, 1892–1921.

  1 1860–1943. Liberal member for Tyneside, 1892–1900, Saffron Walden, 1901–10, and Rotherham, 1910–16. Created 1st Lord Gainford, 1917. President of the Board of Education, 1911–15. Postmaster-General, 1916.

  2 1868–1947. Secretary of State for War, 1912–14. Created 1st Lord Mottistone, 1933.

  1 1869–1956. Created 1st Lord Quickswood, 1941. Unionist member for Greenwich, 1895–1909, and for Oxford University, 1910–1937.

  1 1870–1920. Alexander Murray. Heir to Viscountcy of Elibank, but created 1st Baron Murray of Elibank, 1912. Member for Midlothian, 1900–5, Peebles and Selkirk, 1906–10, and Midlothian, 1910–12. Chief Liberal Whip, 1909–12.

  2 Irish threats were taken sufficiently seriously at this time for the King to make an informal approach to Balfour, no doubt with the approval of Ministers, to see whether, in event of the Irish deciding to vote against the Budget, Unionist support for it could be obtained. Balfour replied in a memorandum dated February 15, that ‘great as would be the embarrassment to all parties which would follow upon an immediate defeat of the Government … it would be vain to ask the Unionist Party on tactical grounds to vote black where they had before voted white’. (See Newton, op. cit., p. 389.)

  1 Although, as late as April 13, the Prime Minister had telegraphed to the King at Biarritz that recent Government decisions to make no changes in the Budget might well involve their defeat. (Spender and Asquith, op. cit., vol. I, p. 278.)

  1 1865–1931. Francis Stanley. 2nd Earl Russell. Later joined Labour Party. Parliamentary Secretary to Ministry of Transport, 1929. Brother of Bertrand Russell (3rd Earl Russell).

  1 Lord Selby. 1835–1909. Formerly Mr. Speaker Gully.

  2 1856–1942. St. John Brodrick. Succeeded to Viscountcy, 1907. Created 1st Earl of Midleton, 1920. Conservative member for Surrey, West, 1880–85, and for Guildford, 1885–1906. Secretary of State for War, 1900–3, and for India, 1903–5.

  1 The chief Conservative Agent in Scotland.

  1 Lord Torphichen. 1846–1915. 12th Baron, representative peer for Scotland, 1894 to January, 1910, and December, 1910–15.

  1 1869–1923. Richard Greville Verney. 19th Lord Willoughby de Broke. Conservative member for Rugby, 1895–1900.

  1 1851–1926. Aretas Akers-Douglas. Created 1st Viscount Chilston, 1911. Conservative member for St. Augustine’s division of Kent, 1880–1911. Chief Conservative Whip, 1883–95. First Commissioner of Works, 1895–1902. Home Secretary, 1902–5.

  1 Mrs. Asquith’s grief, for example, was of a less Roman quality than her husband’s. She has described how on the morning of May 7 she wept on a sofa in Downing Street with Sir Ernest Cassel, and in the evening attended a dinner party at which Mr. Churchill said ‘Let us drink to the health of the new King’, and Lord Crewe with a slight rebuke replied ‘Rather to the memory of the old.’ (The Autobiography of Margot Asquith. vol. 11, p. 138.)

  1 1872–1943. Later 1st Lord Wedgwood. First Liberal and then Labour member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, 1906–42.

  1 Sir Robert Finlay, former Attorney-General, in a note which he took of Balfour’s statement at a Shadow Cabinet held after the breakdown of the conference (see Newton: op. cit., pp. 402–3), says that twenty of the representative peers were to be ‘members of the Government’, leaving only eighty to be chosen by proportional representation. This would be most strictly in accord with ‘fifty majority in the House of Commons’ theory, but it is rendered implausible by the fact that the total number of peers who were members of the Government was substantially less than twenty (when Asquith formed his Government in 1908, he gave office to only thirteen peers, including the Household appointments).

  2 Balfour, who was the recipient of the memorandum in which this sentence occurs and who was less addicted to self-deceit than most men, must have found it somewhat difficult to reconcile with the exchange of views which had passed between himself and Lansdowne at the time of the previous election, or with his own opinion, as relayed by Austen Chamberlain, at the Shadow Cabinet in March (see pp. 143–4 supra).

  1 The referendum was not universally popular on the Unionist side either. F. E. Smith included the following passage in a letter to Austen Chamberlain dated October 21: ‘Personally I hate the referendum. We should win matters which don’t much matter like the licensing question or education on its sectarian side. But if the referendum once comes it will spread and in the great predatory appeals of the future the To
ry Party will always be beaten. Imagine a referendum upon the last Budget!’ (Birkenhead: Frederick Edwin, Earl of Birkenhead, vol. 1, p. 207.)

  1 An indication of this is given by the almost apologetic speech which Augustine Birrell thought it necessary to deliver to his constituents at Bristol on June 24, ‘… do not be agitated,’ he said, ‘there is no need to be agitated.… It is obviously the duty of any persons engaged in any such task as this not to invent compromises but to discover agreement; and then, if discovery is not made, or if it is unsatisfactory, I assure you all, the most enthusiastic politician amongst you, that you will find yourselves relegated to your former positions, with all your rights preserved and able to fight as hard, and I hope as vigorously, with as much good sense and as much information as before, when the time comes.’

  1 He went to the almost fantastic length of writing to Austen Chamberlain asking advice as to whether he should speak in public at all. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I should make not the most distant allusion to the “constitutional question” but, even with this limitation, I hesitate.…’ (quoted by Petrie, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 255.)

  2 Nevertheless, Mrs. Dugdale’s feat of filling two large volumes with information about Balfour, while leaving so many of his most interesting letters and statements to be quoted by other people, is remarkable.

  1 1868–1947. Editor of the Observer, 1908–42.

  2 1864–1934. He wrote the letters under the pseudonym of Pacificus.

  3 1857–1913. Liberal Unionist member for Leamington, 1895–1906 and for St. George’s, Hanover Square, 1906–13. Secretary of State for the Colonies, 1903–5.

  1 In the sense that he was frank in his dealings with other leading politicians, not in the sense that he informed the electorate of what he was doing, of course.

  1 1853–1945. Succeeded his brother as 2nd Earl Balfour, 1930. Conservative member for Leeds, Central, 1885–1906. Chief Secretary for Ireland, 1895–1900. President of the Board of Trade, 1900–5. President of the Local Government Board, 1905.

  1‘I cannot become another Robert Peel in my party,’ he said to Lloyd George (War Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 38). ‘But his (Balfour’s) “stalwarts” and his young wreckers are opposed to him, and he does not fancy the role of Sir Robert Peel,’ Lord Esher recorded on November 9 (Journals and letters, vol. III, p. 30). ‘Yet there was much nobility in the Peel of 1846,’ Esher added.

  1 It is suggested by his biographer that this decision was almost entirely due to the advice of the Master of Elibank. ‘Alick, as Chief Whip, and in charge of the Party organization,’ writes Colonel A. C. Murray (Master and Brother, p. 59), ‘had always been firmly of the opinion that if the Conference failed the Government should immediately appeal to the country, and although, to begin with, the Cabinet was against him, his view ultimately prevailed.’ ‘Ultimately,’ at least, seems to be the wrong word, for the Cabinet decision in favour of an immediate election was made on the first occasion on which a decision could have been taken.

  1 1849–1931. Assistant private secretary to Queen Victoria, 1880–95, and principal private secretary, 1895–1901. Private secretary to George V as Duke of York and Prince of Wales, 1901–10, joint private secretary (with Lord Knollys) to him as King from 1910–13, and principal private secretary from 1913–31. Created Lord Stamfordham, 1911.

  1 A rather vague phrase, it may be thought, and one which departed from the salutary principle that in parliamentary affairs a majority is a majority, and a bill carried by one vote is just as effectively law as one carried by 250. But Crewe, speaking in the Vote of Censure debate nine months later, indicated that it was intended to be more than a phrase. ‘The question whether at any time the advice to “create peers” should be given,’ he said, ‘must necessarily depend for one thing upon the adequacy of the majority with which we were returned to the House of Commons… Fortunately the question of interpretation never arose.

  1 Exactly why there should be constitutional danger in parties indicating that if the electorate voted for them their policies might be carried into effect is not clear.

  1 1852–1930. Reginald Baliol Brett. Succeeded his father as 2nd Viscount Esher, 1899. Liberal member for Penryn and Falmouth, 1880–85. Subsequently became a Liberal Unionist. Friend and confidant of King Edward VII and King George V.

  1 Asquith was a good deal criticised for having taken Crewe to the interview, ‘as if,’ it was said, ‘he needed a witness of what passed’. (See Spender and Asquith, op. cit., vol. I, p. 297n.) More characteristically he had made a hurried appearance at the wedding of a Unionist politician—Mr. L. S. Amery —before proceeding to what he described as ‘the most important political occasion in my life’.

  2 In the Vote of Censure debate, August 7, 1911.

  1 In fact there is no evidence that King Edward had made up his mind what to do if and when the Cabinet demanded the exercise of the prerogative. He certainly approached the matter with distaste, and during his last visit to Biarritz was toying with the compromise idea of ennobling only the eldest sons of Liberal peers and thus rendering the damage to the House of Lords merely temporary (Nicolson, op. cit., p. 129). But his death saved him from the difficulty of decision. Perhaps because he knew this, Sir Arthur Bigge was particularly incensed at Knollys introducing King Edward into the controversy. ‘This quoting what a dead person would do is to me most unfair, if not improper, especially to the King, who has such a high opinion of his father’s judgment. But might I not equally have urged that 1 was perfectly certain Queen Victoria would have done what I advised?’ (Nicolson, op. cit, pp. 138–9.)

  1 This part of the arrangement, of course, was inserted against the convenience of the Liberal Cabinet, in an attempt to ease the position of the King.

  2 1851–1935. Clerk to the Privy Council, 1898–1923.

  1 As late as 1950, Lord Simon was rash enough, in a letter to The Times, to suggest that this would be a constitutionally proper course for King George VI to take.

  1 He expressed these views in a memorandum prepared for the King. (See Journals and Letters, III, pp. 30–3.)

  1 1871–1934. 9th Duke. In 1895 he had married Consuelo Vanderbilt of New York, his father having previously married, late in life, a rich American as his second wife.

  1 ‘Ah, gentlemen, what a change eleven short months have wrought!’ this passage began. ‘This ancient and picturesque structure has been condemned by its own inmates as unsafe. The parricidal pickaxes are already at work, and constitutional jerry-builders are hurrying from every quarter with new plans. Dr. Johnson once said of a celebrated criminal, who after his condemnation showed literary activity, “Depend upon it, Sir, when a man is going to be hanged in a fortnight it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” The activity recently displayed by the House of Lords in providing itself with a successor is surely a miracle of this kind of mental concentration. In a single sitting, not unduly prolonged, the venerable institution, which has withstood the storm and stress of ages, was transformed—in principle, of course; some of the details are still withheld—into a brand new modern Senate.… The motive for this feverish exhibition of destructive and constructive ardour is not far to seek. The Tory Party were determined at all hazards not to face another General Election with the incubus of the House of Lords on their back. There must be something to put in its place, something—it did not matter for the moment very much what—but something which could be called a Second Chamber, with a coat, however thin, of democratic varnish.’ (Spender and Asquith, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 299–300.)

  1 1854–1935. Editor of The Times, 1884–1912, and biographer of Disraeli.

  2 1871–1930. Sir John Norton-Griffiths. Member for Wednesbury, 1910–18 and Wandsworth, Central, 1918–24.

  1 A list of the surprisingly large number of seats which changed hands at this election is given in appendix c.

  1 He was created a viscount at the end of March.

  1 1859–1942. William Waldegrave Palmer. 2nd Earl of Selborne. First Lord of the Admiralty,
1900–5. High Commissioner in South Africa, 1905–10. President of the Board of Agriculture, 1915–16.

  1 This point has again arisen recently (1952) in connection with Lord Simon’s bill for the creation of life peerages.

  2 On March 3, Lord Crewe had collapsed and become seriously ill while attending the dinner at Claridge’s Hotel which it was then the custom for the Lord President to give annually in connection with the ‘pricking’ of the Sheriffs. Apart from a brief appearance in the Vote of Censure debate in August, he subsequently took no further part in the constitutional struggle. Morley temporarily took his place both as Secretary of State for India and as leader of the House of Lords, assuming a new importance in relation to the Parliament Bill.

  1 1850–1936. Member for Peckham, 1892–1906, and for the City of London, 1906–24. Created 1st Lord Banbury, 1924.

  2 1870–1948. Member for Sheffield, Brightside, 1900–6, and Sheffield, Central, 1908–29. Chairman of Committees and Deputy Speaker, 1921-February, 1924, and December, 1924–29. Created 1st Lord Rankeillour, 1932.

  3 1852–1941. Charles Alfred Cripps. Created 1st Lord Parmoor, 1914. Conservative member for Stroud, 1895–1900, Stretford division of Lancashire, 1901–6, and Wycombe, 1910–14. Later joined the Labour Party and was Lord President of the Council in 1924 and 1929–31.

  1 1865–1946. Member for Tonbridge, 1892–1906, Dudley, 1910–21, and Taunton, 1921–23. Minister of Agriculture, 1921–22. Minister of Health, 1922–23.

  1 It was in the debate on the second reading of this bill, on May 30, that Mr. Churchill, whose radicalism reached its apogee during this summer, made his famous and much-criticised comment that ‘while the courts were eminently fair between man and man, where class issues and party issues were involved they did not command the same degree of confidence’. (Annual Register, 1911, p. 132.)