Asquith

by Roy Jenkins

  At the end of the month Parliament adjourned until February, and the Liberal Party was given an interval for re-grouping. It made little use of the opportunity. In January Asquith spent twenty-four hours with Rosebery at Mentmore and made a determined effort to move him into a more co-operative position. He did not succeed. “ You did not convince me the other evening, nor I you,” Rosebery wrote on January 29th. “ I act as an obstacle, real or apparent, to the unity of the Liberal Party,” he continued. “ I am therefore bound in the interests of the party and its unity to offer some remedy or alternative, and thus I offer to take a back seat, nay, if necessary, to retire from politics, at any rate for a time. What more can I do? ” But this was not what Asquith wanted, and he kept the knowledge of Rosebery’s nearness to resignation to as narrow a circle as possible.

  In the following August Rosebery drew up and circulated to his colleagues a memorandum which gave political and not merely personal shape to his discontents.

  “ There will be I suppose this autumn calls for a definite Liberal policy,” he began. “ Any such calls will be in my opinion premature, and, as far as I am concerned, futile.... It is impossible for the Liberal Party to remain nailed to the innumerable political propositions lightly accepted by Mr. Gladstone for the promotion of his Irish policy. The party needs to make a new start and to shed much of this—which may be desirable in the abstract or may not—but which by its bulk and multifarious aggressiveness constitutes an encumbrance—not an inspiration or assistance.. . .

  I believe that the best chance for the Liberal party lies much more in reaction from the present government than in any gospel of its own. The present government is the first Tory government since 1867: weakly and distractedly Tory no doubt, but comelled to be Tory by the brute force of its majority.... This is an immense advantage to the Liberal party, because it forces real Liberals back to that party, and helps on the process which all true Liberals must have at heart—the restoration of the Liberal party to what it was in richness, variety and strength before 1886.”b

  This was the clearest outline of his political attitude given by Rosebery during these years, and it contained one strand of thought—that of hope for the restoration of the pre - 1886 balance—which was later to separate him sharply from Asquith. The memorandum was also a prelude to his resignation, although it did not state this, and his mind, at least as to timing, may easily not have been made up when he wrote it. But at the end of September Gladstone suddenly emerged from retirement. In the last public speech of his life, at Liverpool, he delivered a great denunciation of the Armenian massacres, accompanied by a demand for British intervention against the Turks. This Rosebery chose to treat not only as a last speech but as “ the last straw on his back.” His personal relations with Gladstone had remained perfectly friendly —and continued so—but he regarded the G.O.M.’s final policy demand as totally unacceptable, and its promulgation as further undermining his own position. In fact Harcourt was just as opposed to Gladstone’s demands as was Rosebery1 but, unlike Rosebery, he was not worried that they would enable “ discontented Liberals to pelt him with (Gladstone’s) authority.” Nor was he looking for an excuse to resign. But Rosebery was, and on October 6th he wrote to Ellis, the Chief Whip, announcing laconically that “ the leadership of the party, so far as I am concerned, is vacant.”

  1 Asquith, surprisingly, had gone furthest towards them by suggesting the severance of diplomatic relations with Turkey.

  No one appears to have been consulted beforehand. Asquith was due to stay with Rosebery at Dalmeny for an Edinburgh meeting on Friday, October 9th, and he received two letters from him on the Wednesday, both dated Tuesday, the 6th. The first, written before the letter to Ellis, made no reference to it and was concerned mainly with travel arrangements. The second, by a later post, excused the brevity of the first one by his having been “ occupied to the last moment with a letter to Ellis, of which I am afraid you will disapprove,” and which could not be described in “ a letter about trains.” After pegging his resignation to Gladstone’s speech, Rosebery concluded:

  “ From the bottom of my heart I can say that one of my deepest regrets in coming to that decision is the political severance with yourself, for your loyalty and friendship are one of my few bright associations with the last two years. I hope that, very soon, you will replace me.”

  Asquith arrived at Dalmeny on the Thursday morning, a few hours after the daily newspapers which carried the first news of the resignation. He was in time to join a curious luncheon party at which the future Lord Northcliffe, whom Rosebery described as “ an interesting young man ” and who had come for an interview, was also present. Rosebery noted that Asquith “ behaved as always extremely well, but complained a little of no one having been consulted.” The following evening, supported by H. H. Fowler as well as by Asquith, Rosebery delivered his resignation address to an audience of 4,000 in the Empire Theatre, Edinburgh. “ It went off well enough,” he noted, “ indeed too well—as the Empire Theatre was so conversational to speak in that I lasted for nearly two hours.” In the course of the two hours, as might have been expected in the circumstances, he paid a notably warm tribute to Asquith, including the following passage, hackneyed by then in its prediction of ultimate political success but interesting in its attribution of qualities:

  “Those who say that1 must know Mr. Asquith very little, because consummate and considerable as are his powers of brain, in my opinion his head is not equal to his heart, and it is that rare combination of head and heart which, in my judgment, if my prophecy be worth anything, will conduct him to the highest office in the State.”

  1 That Asquith had not been in as “ hearty association ” with Rosebery as he might have been. Who did ? Or was Rosebery merely displaying his over-sensitive egocentricity even in his introduction to the tribute ?

  The meeting over they returned to Dalmeny. On the following day, the Saturday, Margot arrived, and she and Asquith spent that day and the next with Rosebery until, on the Sunday evening, he left for Newmarket and they returned to Glen. Asquith and Rosebery remained on terms of affectionate friendship—Asquith usually stayed at Dalmeny or Mentmore once or twice a year and Rosebery wrote a letter of congratulation whenever Asquith made a particularly notable speech—but except for a brief moment in 1902 there was no further political collaboration between them. That chapter was effectively over. Asquith regretted its end, but he accepted it more realistically than did either Grey or Haldane who continued until 1905 to look upon Rosebery as in some sense their true leader and to believe that he might again be Prime Minister.

  In the outside world Rosebery’s going caused a great stir. He always obtained the maximum dramatic effect from his actions, and the voluntary resignation of a party leadership by a man of 49 who had held it for only fifteen months of government and eighteen months of opposition would at any time be a remarkable event. But Harcourt at least took it in his stride. “ For my part I really do not see what is changed except ‘ that there is a Liberal the less he wrote to Morley on October 26th. “ Of course the reasons given by Rosebery for bolting are not the true ones,” he added. “ I believe he funked the future which he saw before him .. . that he did not know what to say and so took up his hat and departed.”c 1

  1 Harcourt at this stage seemed preoccupied by hat-seizing departures. “ For my part,” he wrote about himself four days later, also to Morley, “ if I did not think it currish to bolt in the presence of difficulties, I should take up my hat and say good-bye.” (Gardiner, op cit., 11, p. 422.)

  In the sense that the public standing of the Liberal Party at the time was hardly such that it could afford the loss of a single notable figure Harcourt’s comment was complacent—although in his position he would have needed a superhuman breadth of view not to be glad to see the back of Rosebery. But in the sense that the change made little immediate practical difference he was undoubtedly right. Rosebery had done nothing for the party since he had ceased to be Prime Mini
ster. The leadership in neither House of Parliament was affected, and no question of appointing a new titular leader for the party as a whole was raised. Harcourt was so much the superior of Kimberley, not only in political experience (as he had been of Rosebery) but in popular impact too (as he had not been) that he now necessarily appeared before the public as the real leader. But he made no attempt to secure formal recognition for this reality. On the contrary he reacted rather casually to the new circumstances. “ One advantage of the situation,” he wrote, “ is that I feel altogether absolved from speechification. I have happily discharged my double barrel to my constituents, which is all that is obligatory.”d

  So he retired for the rest of the autumn and early winter. But he took the opportunity in November, again in a private letter to Morley, to deny any animosity towards Asquith. “ Every effort has been made by the mischief-makers to cause ill blood between me and Asquith,” he wrote. “ I have had every reason to rely on his good faith and good will, and never allow myself to be influenced by gossip."e

  The only immediate effect of Rosebery’s resignation was to give a further twist to the already rapid spiral of Liberal demoralisation. Politics were not wholly in the doldrums. Domestically this may have been so. The third Salisbury Government had little that was constructive to propose in the field of home legislation; and indeed, so weak was its impetus in this direction, that even the distracted Liberal opposition was able to bury its first major venture—the Education Bill of 1896, designed to relieve the position of the voluntary schools—in what Harcourt called “ the bog of Hansard.” But externally it was a period oi movement and innovation. Joseph Chamberlain, his energies pent up by a decade of political transition—determined to give no support to the Liberals, unwilling to join the Conservatives—had at last found his way back to office as Colonial Secretary.

  Almost the first result, although an unintentional one, of his forward colonial policy, was the disastrous Jameson Raid into the territory of the Transvaal which took place over the Christmas and New Year of 1895-6. Asquith wrote of the enterprise in terms of lofty and mocking disapproval:

  An adventure more childishly conceived or more clumsily executed it is impossible to imagine, and it resulted in immediate and ignominious failure. Dr. Jameson and his fellow filibusters (together with their secret cipher) were captured by the Boers. They were handed over with perhaps superfluous magnanimity, by President Kruger to the Imperial authorities, and having done by their blundering folly as great a disservice as it was possible to render, not only to the Uitlanders but to the best interests of the Empire, were, on their arrival in England, acclaimed and feted by a section of London society as the worthy successors of Drake and Raleighf

  Yet he allowed Margot to go a long way towards lining up with this “ section of Society.” “ Dr. Jim (Sir Starr Jameson) had personal magnetism, and could do what he liked with my sex,” she wrote.

  “ My husband and I met the Doctor first—a week or ten days before his trial and sentence—at Georgina Lady Dudley’s house; and the night before he went to prison he dined with us alone in Cavendish Square."g

  This last statement, if her recollection was correct, is a striking example both of her ability to hunt even the most unsuitable lions and of the absence of publicity for private events in those days. Jameson, together with his collaborators, stood his trial at the Old Bailey between the 20th and the 29th of July, 1896. On the last day he was sentenced by Lord Chief Justice Russell to fifteen months’ imprisonment and was sent that evening to Wormwood Scrubs. The Asquith dinner must therefore have taken place on the night of the 28th, when Jameson was poised between acquittal and punishment and when the attention of the whole country was concentrated upon him. It is astonishing in these circumstances, when even the Government thought his conviction highly necessary, that a prominent Liberal should have dared to ask him to dinner. It is rather as though, had the circumstances made it possible, Bonar Law had decided on the day after the Dublin Easter Rebellion to organise a little private party for Patric Pearse or James Connolly. It is even more astonishing that Jameson should have wished to accept the invitation for that particular evening. Surely, however great may have been Margot’s charm and however impressive Asquith’s reputation, he would have preferred to spend it with some of the many who regarded him as a wronged hero.

  Mrs. Asquith related another incident about the Jameson events which, although also without corroboration, is inherently more probable. Of more significance than the guilt of Jameson was the complicity first of Cecil Rhodes (which no one was greatly inclined to doubt), and secondly of Joseph Chamberlain (which many people were inclined to suspect). To enquire into the first and if possible to avoid enquiry into the second of these matters, the Government proposed the appointment of a House of Commons Select Committee. Chamberlain moved to set it up on the day Jameson was sent to prison, but the proposal lapsed with the end of the parliamentary session a fortnight later, and the Committee did not begin work, after re-constitution, until the new session in February, 1897. The incident which Mrs. Asquith described related to July, 1896:

  “ I remember opening the front door of 20 Cavendish Square to Mr. Chamberlain one morning about that time, and showing him into my husband’s library,” she wrote. “ At the end of a long visit I went into the room and said:

  ‘ What did Joe want, Henry? ’ To which he answered:

  ‘ He asked me if I would serve on the Committee of Inquiry into the responsibility of the Jameson Raid—they call it “ the Rhodes Commission ”—and I refused.’ I asked him why he had refused, to which he answered: ‘ Do you take me for a fool?"h

  It is not clear why Asquith should have reacted so violently against this proposal. Neither then nor subsequently did he believe in Chamberlain’s guilt. “ Nothing could have been more prompt or correct than the steps at once taken by Mr. Chamberlain....” he wrote many years later of the Colonial Secretary’s immediate reaction to Jameson’s enterprise. “ His condemnation of the Raid was severe and uncompromising . .. and both Lord Rosebery and Sir William Harcourt paid public tributes to the admirable manner in which he had handled the situation.”* And there were plenty of other “ fools ” who responded to equal or lesser pressure. Chamberlain got Harcourt and Campbell-Bannerman, amongst former Liberal ministers, to serve on the Committee, and they were both curiously compliant in not following up the lines of enquiry which might have proved damaging to the Colonial Secretary, without in consequence suffering any loss of standing in the Liberal Party.1 Perhaps Asquith, with his steadily developing belief in an economy of intellectual effort, was merely reacting against spending six months upon an enquiry which he thought likely to be politically disappointing.

  1 Against the view that a more resolute pursuit of the contents of the “ Hawksley telegrams ” might have unmasked Chamberlain, must be set the careful exoneration of him which is one of the main themes of Lady Pakenham’s (now Lady Longford), Jameson s Raid, published in 1960.

  It would be easy to exaggerate Liberal bitterness against Chamberlain at this stage. The older generation of leaders—Harcourt and Morley—never entirely lost the personal friendship with him which they had established upon the basis of political agreement in the ’eighties. And even in the late ’nineties this was accompanied by surprising if occasional shafts of political sympathy. “ I have great confidence in Chamberlain’s humanity,” Morley wrote to Asquith in a letter dealing with South Africa and dated December 21st, 1897.

  “ He has real feeling about ill-treatment of natives and will do as much as anybody to keep the brutes of colonists in order in these matters.... When you write to Milner be sure to convey to him all good wishes from me.”f Asquith and his contemporaries, on the other hand, had barely known Chamberlain in his Liberal days, but they were eager to get to know him better in his Unionist ones. On June nth, 1898, for example, a well-assorted political luncheon party, composed of the Asquiths, Haldane, Edward Grey, Augustine Birrell and Chamberlain wit
h his third wife and daughter Beatrice, assembled in the Cheshire Cheese off Fleet Street, and was a great success. Both sets of Liberals, the older Gladstonians and the younger imperialists, regarded Chamberlain as a most formidable foe. But they had no wish, in spite of 1886 and subsequent events, to destroy him politically—a wise tolerance, as things turned out, from the point of view of the future of the Liberal Party.

  A more significant relationship for the politics of colonial affairs in the years leading up to the South African War, was that between Alfred Milner and many of the Liberals, and particularly Asquith. Milner was appointed by Chamberlain to succeed Sir Hercules Robinson as High Commissioner in South Africa in March, 1897. He quickly became the instigator and instrument of a tough policy towards the Boers, but he went out with the blessings of the Liberal Party—of which he was in general a supporter—as well as of the Government. Asquith, who had known him since Balliol, presided at a great dinner of farewell, at which Chamberlain, Balfour and Morley spoke, and to which Rosebery and Harcourt (united for once) sent warm messages. After his arrival at the Cape Milner used Asquith as his main channel of communication with the Liberal Party and wrote him long, frequent and confidential bulletins of information and argument. That there was little of an “ imperialist ” intrigue about this correspondence is shown by Morley’s desire to use it as a vehicle for his own good wishes. But as time went on Milner became more inclined to suggest that what he wrote should be shown “ to Grey and Haldane and no one else.” There is little doubt that Asquith’s views on the approach of the Boer War were influenced by Milner’s letters, Ger-manically voluminous though they were for his taste.