Asquith

by Roy Jenkins

  And so it went on until a short time before their marriage. The engagement when it was finally agreed upon and announced was a short one. Miss Tennant had at last suppressed her fears about the five children, and overcome the state of mind which she described as “ groping as I had been for years to find a character and intellect superior to my own, I did not feel equal to facing it when I found it.” And Asquith, for the moment, had undoubtedly achieved what he wanted. He had reversed the pattern followed by many men of being rather discontented with one woman, and then, when an opportunity for fresh choice presented itself, proceeding to marry someone who was as similar as possible to his first wife. Instead, he claimed complete happiness while his first marriage lasted, but followed this up by the early acquisition of a second wife who was in almost every respect the direct opposite of Helen Asquith. The marriage which he began in Hanover Square in his forty-second year and on a high tide of worldly success was to be quite different, both emotionally and socially, from that which seventeen years before he had entered upon in Didsbury Parish Church.

  His wedding gave the new Government one of its few hours of harmony. The Rosebery Cabinet was a singularly unhappy one in which to serve. Within eight days of its formation the Prime Minister made what Asquith described as his faux pas in the House of Lords and incensed the radical wing of the party and their Irish supporters by suggesting that Home Rule could not be achieved until a majority of the English members in the House of Commons were in its favour. This ‘ ‘ predominant partner ” approach was to provide the Unionists with one of their most convenient lines of defence over the next twenty years; and its enunciation by the head of a Liberal Government helped to provoke a radical revolt in the House of Commons on the following day. Labouchere moved an amendment to the address calling for the almost complete abolition of the House of Lords veto and carried it by a majority of two, the opposition abstaining. To be defeated on such an occasion was an unusual and humiliating experience for a Government. Resignation was avoided by the expedient of voting down the amended address and bringing in a new one in its place; but it was an inauspicious beginning.

  Relations between Rosebery and Harcourt quickly deteriorated. Harcourt was busy preparing (with the help of Alfred Milner who was chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue) and then piloting through the House of Commons his famous 44 death duties ” Budget. This measure—paradoxically the only notable achievement of the administration over which he presided—was distasteful to Rosebery. There is dispute as to how much opposition the Prime Minister offered in the Cabinet (" we spent dreary hours listening to H(arcourt) reading out typewritten discourses on the Budget,” he later recordedh) but what is certain is that he wrote a hostile memorandum to Harcourt, who replied in uncompromising and even bitter terms,1 and that he made little attempt to present a united front to the Queen.

  1 The tone of the exchange may be gauged from a passage in which Harcourt, replying to a suggestion ofRosebery’s that the whole landowning class would be alienated from the Liberal Party, wrote: " If it be so, the Liberal Party will share the fate of another party which was founded 1,894 years ago, of which it was written that it was 4 hard for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom.’ I think it is highly probable that there are many young men who will go away sorrowful because they have great possessions.”

  “With regard to the Budget, it is practically passed,” he wrote to her on July 13 th, “and it would be impossible now to make any change in its provisions. Lord Rosebery is himself inclined to take a somewhat gloomy view of its effect on the class to which he himself belongs.”i

  Henceforward the Prime Minister and the leader of the House of Commons were barely on speaking terms. They communicated only by means of papers circulated in red despatch boxes or by cold exchanges across the Cabinet table. This rupture extended to policy. There were in effect two Governments. Harcourt occupied himself with his Budget (with which interference from the House of Lords w^ s still regarded as unthinkable), with the new issue of local option (in licensing), and with a constant nagging watch upon Lord Kimberley, designed to exorcise any trace of a “ forward policy ” from the Foreign Office. When Rosebery threw the question of the relations between the two Houses into the centre of politics, Harcourt stood consciously (and unnaturally) aloof from the whole issue, and when Lord Spencer wrote to remonstrate with him, he replied, blandly but surprisingly, “As you know I am not a supporter of the present Government.”j

  Asquith, although a natural “Roseberyite,” wrote that “on the merits of most of the points at issue I was disposed to side with Harcourt.” But this feeling about the merits was more than balanced by his conviction that Harcourt’s personal behaviour was intolerable. “ His lack of any sense of proportion,” he wrote, “ his incapacity for self-restraint, and his perverse delight in inflaming and embittering every controversy, made co-operation with him always difficult and often impossible. Cabinet life under such conditions was a weariness both to the flesh and to the spirit.”k Like a number of other ministers Asquith tried to get on with his departmental work and avoid being too much embroiled in the quarrel. Rosebery always wrote to him on terms of close friendship and even complicity (“ 67 ton guns are from time to time being discharged from a certain fortress in the New Forest1 at the devoted Kimberley. ... I did wish you had been in Mount Street on Saturday. I received orders from the C. of E. on the subject of poor M.2 on Friday afternoon . . .”) and Asquith fully reciprocated this friendliness. But he was more concerned at this stage with completing his successful tenure of the Home Office than with taking sides and attempting to drive the Liberal Party in one direction or the other.

  1 Harcourt built a house called Mai wood, near Lyndhurst, in 1883. It was designed in what was sometimes called the “ parliamentary style ” and bore a strong resemblance to Highbury which Joseph Chamberlain had built a few years earlier. At the end of his life Harcourt inherited (from his nephew) the old family mansion of Nuneham, near Oxford, and died there. But he always greatly preferred Malwood.

  2 Arnold Morley, the Postmaster General.

  During the fifteen months between the retirement of Gladstone and the fall of the Government three aspects of Asquith’s work attracted most attention. The first was a thankless attempt to bring the Welsh Disestablishment Bill to a stage at which it was ready for slaughter by the House of Lords. The bill had been introduced and then abandoned because of the Home Rule Bill in 1893, and the procedure was repeated, still more perfunctorily on this occasion, in the short session of 1894, when Harcourt’s Budget swallowed up most of the available time. In 1895, however, it was given a higher priority, and itself became the main consumer of parliamentary days. But it made very slow progress. Asquith had to deal not only with determined opposition and obstruction from the Unionists, but also with sporadic cross-fire from Welsh Liberals who thought the Government was not going far enough. Lloyd George, who had been first elected in 1891 and whose political interest in those days was primarily sectarian, was prominent and extreme amongst these. It was Asquith’s first contact with him.

  It was also Asquith’s first experience of trying to push a big, controversial bill, inch by inch, through the House of Commons. As could have been foreseen, he discharged this duty with skill and urbanity, but he did not enjoy the manoeuvring which it involved and he did not warm during the process to the Welsh nonconformists whose interests he was serving. The frequent and long-winded deputations from Welsh members he found even more trying than the almost endless sittings in the House, and a certain antipathy towards the Welsh temperament, which in later life (even before 1916) he never made much effort to conceal, may well have begun with his troubles over the Disestablishment Bill. After twelve nights in committee and remarkably little progress, “ it was with a sigh of relief,” Asquith wrote, “ that, when the Government was defeated on another issue, I laid down my thankless task.”l

  Asquith was simultaneously occupied with a less sterile legislative task. This was a Fa
ctories and Workshops Bill, which rounded off one of the most constructive aspects of his work at the Home Office. Within a few months of his appointment he had carried through a substantial strengthening of the Factory Inspectorate, including the notable innovation of appointing the first women inspectors. A year later he again increased the establishment of this division of his department and appointed another two women, the first two having already proved themselves successful. In addition he set up six committees to enquire into some of the most notorious “ dangerous trades ” of the period, such as chemicals, pottery and paint, and generally gave a higher priority, in respect both of his own attention and of the allocation of the most talented civil servants, to the industrial side of the Home Office’s work than had hitherto been the practice.

  The Factories Bill, which he introduced in March, 1895, contained a mixed bag of provisions. A necessary minimum of space for each person employed was laid down. New rules for the reporting and investigation of accidents were made and a new standard of protection against moving machinery was ordered. Fire escapes for all industrial premises were stipulated. Restrictions were placed on overtime working, and docks and laundries were brought for the first time within the scope of factory legislation. Although a complicated and far-ranging measure it was not regarded as controversial in a strict party sense. The committee stage was taken not on the floor of the House of Commons, but in what was then called the Grand Committee on Trade. As a result the progress of the Factories Bill was not blocked by the Welsh Church Bill. Even so, it was still in committee when the Government resigned on June 24th. The new Government agreed to assist its passage, however, and on July 6th, the day before the dissolution, it went through all stages in the House of Lords and received the royal assent.

  Asquith’s most notable foray into general politics during this period was in the debate on the address at the beginning of the 1895 session. In addition to dealing with an amendment affecting the Home Office he also replied to a much wider-ranging one moved by Chamberlain which accused the Government of wasting the time of the House by putting before it measures which were known to have no chance of passing into law. Instead of “ filling up the cup ” with grievances against the House of Lords, Chamberlain argued, the Government should proceed to lay before Parliament any constitutional proposals which it had in mind. The object of the amendment was to expose the split between Rosebery and Harcourt on House of Lords reform, but for Chamberlain, with his past support of Welsh disestablishment and his past attacks on the peers, it was rash ground to choose.

  Asquith used the opportunity presented by this unusual lowering of Chamberlain’s parliamentary guard to hammer him mercilessly. “ Now, Sir,” he concluded, “ I should be glad to know, and the House would be glad to know.. .. what my right honourable friend1 thinks has happened to the cup which was nearly full in 1885 (when Chamberlain had himself originated the phrase), and how he explains that in his view the House of Lords, which, as he told the electors then, had ‘ sheltered every abuse and protected every privilege for nearly a century ’ has become, as he apparently thinks it has, the last refuge of popular liberty? ”m “Asquith’s speech last night was a splendid success,” Harcourt wrote to his son with one of the bursts of generous enthusiasm which compensated for much of his tiresomeness. “ He knocked Joe into a cocked hat. Even the Tories admit that the latter was nowhere. ... I don’t think I have ever heard a speech which created so great an effect in the House.n

  1 As he rather surprisingly still called Chamberlain.

  The Government had a good debating spring, for both Harcourt himself and Henry Fowler, the new Secretary of State for India, achieved successes almost as notable as Asquith’s, the former with a denunciation of bimetallism and the latter with a defence of the Indian cotton duties. Unpromising though the subjects sound, these achievements raised the stock of the Government, and Harcourt was able to write triumphantly to the Chief Whip of “ our insolent foes (going) chapfallen to eat their addled Easter eggs.”

  The triumphs did not long continue. The Government had very small majorities on many of the Welsh Church divisions in May and early June. But defeat came, in a thin House (Asquith like many others was paired), on the unexpected issue of a motion to reduce Campbell-Bannerman’s salary because of deficiencies in the supply of cordite.

  Had the Cabinet wished to fight back and get the House to reverse this decision they could no doubt have done so. Alternatively they could have asked for a dissolution. But after a four hour discussion ministers decided against either move. Divided on so many other issues, Rosebery and Harcourt were united in agreeing that, for a weak Government, they had run their course, and that it was time to go. Asquith did not originally agree with them—only Ripon and Tweedmouth did—but like the rest of the Cabinet he came into line. Rosebery resigned that evening and left it to Salisbury, for whom the Queen immediately sent, to arrange for the dissolution of Parliament. Asquith handed over his seals to Sir Matthew Ridley with the secure knowledge that he had scored an outstanding success during his thirty-four months of office.

  OUT OF OFFICE

  1895-1902

  The election of 1895 was a disaster for the Liberals. There was no unity of policy. Morley fought on Home Rule. Harcourt fought on local option. And Rosebery, insofar as he fought at all, did so on the House of Lords. His interventions on this or any other issue took place before the dissolution of Parliament. Once the campaign had properly begun, the convention that peers should not interfere in elections coalesced with his distaste for much of his party to make him give the widest possible berth to the scene of the contests. He hired a yacht and sailed round the North of Scotland, calling occasionally at remote fishing ports to receive, with mixed feelings, news of the mounting disasters.

  Asquith had a hard campaign, fought without his wife who was ill in London, but his result—a majority increased from 294 to 716 —was much better than the general run of Liberal performance. This was not primarily due to his record as a minister or to his effectiveness as a campaigner. The Scottish lowlands as a whole, which had failed to swing to the Liberals in 1892, compensated by refusing to swing against them in 1895. Campbell-Bannerman, the only other member of the late Cabinet with a constituency in this area, also improved his majority. But in England the Liberal toll was severe. Harcourt was beaten at Derby and Morley at Newcastle-on-Tyne. Harcourt’s reverse occurred sufficiently early in the staggered election of those days for him to switch rapidly to West Monmouthshire, where local option was more popular, and secure his return there without any break in parliamentary service. But Morley remained out until the late autumn when he too retired to a haven in the Celtic fringe— Montrose Burghs.

  Rosebery brought himself to write a short note of regret to Harcourt after the Derby result, but his real feelings were better expressed in a letter which he wrote to Asquith on July 22nd. After commiserating with him on the “ insolent set made at you in the way of heckling,” and congratulating him on his “ admirable temper and composure,” he added: “ I think it would do one of our defeated colleagues infinite good to stand for East Fife. My only interest has been in individual elections like yours, for the general catastrophe was under the circumstances certain and inevitable. We may indeed congratulate ourselves that we are not more completely pulverised.”

  Even so, the defeat was bad enough. The Liberals were reduced from 274 to 177. Lord Salisbury’s majority was 152, and the new Government, the first in which the Liberal Unionist leaders accepted office, showed every sign of being a long-lived one.

  This meant that Asquith had to make major dispositions in his pattern of life. His political prospects had greatly advanced during the lifetime of the Liberal Government. In a party rent by faction he was the only man of note of whom no-one spoke ill. This was not because he was a weak figure without a clear-cut position. His moderate Roseberyite views were well known, but many of those who did not accept them nevertheless thought that the best hope for the future o
f the Liberal Party lay with him. “You need not mind any of the quarrels,” Sir William Harcourt said to Margot Asquith . . . “ your man is the man of the future.”a Mr. Gladstone believed much the same; so did Lord Spencer; and so, more predictably, did Lord Rosebery.