Asquith

by Roy Jenkins

  Throughout the country, however, while the Liberal Imperialists mostly did somewhat better than the generality of their party, the difference was not so decisive as to leave no ground for dispute. The extreme “ pro-Boers,” who were at this stage almost as critical of Campbell-Bannerman as were the Imperialists,2 countered by arguing that if the leadership had not compromised themselves by accepting the annexation of the two republics as inevitable,3 the party could have fought back more enthusiastically and effectively. In addition, the centre of the party had a more concrete cause of grievance than the right. In July a Liberal Imperial Council had been set up, with R. W. Perks, who was member for Louth and Fowler’s law partner, as the leading figure. The Imperialist front-benchers held aloof from its activities, but were inevitably regarded as sympathetic to its objects. Immediately before the election it issued a list of 56 Liberal candidates —including of course Asquith, Grey and Haldane—whom it regarded as worthy of the fullest support. This proceeding, with the implied proscription of the remainder, naturally aroused considerable resentment. And the offence was made worse when the Council responded to the defeat by publishing a manifesto (the style of which should at least have made it clear that Asquith had nothing to do with the drafting) declaring that “ the time has arrived when it is necessary to clearly and permanently distinguish Liberals in whose policy with regard to Imperial questions patriotic voters may justly repose confidence from those whose opinions naturally disqualify them from controlling the action of an Imperial Parliament of a world-wide community of nations.”

  Campbell-Bannerman reacted strongly and immediately. On October 21st he wrote to Harcourt saying: “ I have sent to the Press a letter in denunciation of the Perks manifesto, which carries mischievous audacity beyond toleration, but I think the manifesto is a happy incident, as showing quiet Liberals through the country something of the spirit of the men we have to deal with.”-? All the typical signs of reaction to a really bitter intra-party dispute were present in this statement. But Campbell-Bannerman did not feel that he could then leave it entirely to “ quiet Liberals ” to make their disapproval felt. On November 15th he spoke at Dundee and delivered a strong attack on the Liberal Imperialist Council and an equally strong encomium of Harcourt and Morley. By an unfortunate slip of the tongue he referred to the Council as the Liberal Unionist Council. This slip in turn aroused great bitterness. Its modern equivalent would be for a prominent Labour Party spokesman to refer to the right wing of that party as wishing to behave as MacDonald did in 1931.

  The immediate post-Khaki election period was therefore one of mounting disunity within the Liberal Party. Campbell-Bannerman’s intention throughout these months was to hold the balance between the different sections of his followers. At Dundee, acting against the advice which Asquith had given him in a friendly letter of November 13 th, he made some sort of overture—although a rather clumsy one —towards Rosebery. In December he had to deal with an offer from Harcourt to rejoin the Shadow Cabinet, and told him, in effect, that it would be inopportune. Both in that month and in January he threw his weight against any Liberal motion for the recall or censure of Milner. He also claimed that both then and in the summer of 1901, when the position became still more strained, he retained good personal relations with Asquith. He often complained about the machinations of “ Master Haldane ” or “ Master Grey,” but he never gave Asquith this disapproving title or put him in quite the same category.

  Yet even if their relations remained reasonably good they could hardly be called close. In the weeks after the election Campbell-Bannerman exchanged frequent and friendly political letters with Harcourt, the man whose flouncing resignation had pushed him into the leadership. There were no equivalent exchanges with Asquith, who was nominally his first lieutenant. But when they saw each other, which was fairly frequently while the House was sitting and most infrequently when it was not, they were always able to speak easily and amicably. Asquith’s position throughout was that of a committed Imperialist, but a moderate one whose influence upon the others, both ostensibly and in fact, was restraining.

  Over the turn of the century, from December 1900 to the spring of 1901, the internal party situation became a little easier. Before Christmas the Imperialists joined with impressive enthusiasm in supporting a Lloyd George motion which was in effect a personal censure of Chamberlain for allowing his family firms to benefit from war contracts. This led to a bitter debate, and the fact that Grey and Haldane—who both spoke—drew a large part of the acrimony on to their own heads helped to silence suspicions that the Liberal right was preparing to do a Whig shuffle across to the Unionists. After Christmas there was the lull caused by the death of the Queen on January 22nd and then a remarkably amicable meeting of the National Liberal Federation at Rugby at the end of February.

  This easier period came to an end on May 24th—the date of Milner’s return to England on leave. Whatever effect he may have had in Soutli Africa he never failed to be the enemy of conciliation within the Liberal Party. From the moment of his arrival a new and more dangerous phase of the Liberal Imperialist dispute began. Grey went down to Southampton to meet him. Fowler attended a Claridge’s banquet which Chamberlain gave in his honour, and listened, with approval it was assumed, to a notably intransigent speech. This provoked Morley to denounce Milner as an “ imitation Bismarck,” and Bryce to use equally strong but less pithy language. Then Grey replied to Morley at Berwick-on-Tweed. Campbell-Bannerman attempted one conciliatory speech, claiming that apart from a few unimportant people and a few unimportant issues there was basic Liberal unity on South Africa. This produced more derision than conviction.

  A fortnight later, he swung decisively away from emollient platitude, and at a dinner of the National Reform Union on June 14th, delivered his most memorable and controversial statement of the war. Boer resistance was then carried on by guerilla methods. They had no effective army in the field, but almost every isolated farmstead had become an armed blockhouse. British troops were trying to complete their conquest by destroying the farm buildings and shepherding the Boer population into concentration camps. Campbell-Bannerman, speaking at the Holborn Restaurant before a predominantly “ pro-Boer ” audience, which included Harcourt and Morley, was discussing these methods. “ A phrase often used,” he said, “ was that ‘ war is war,’ but when one came to ask about it one was told that no war was going on, that it was not war. When was a war not a war? When it was carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa.”k

  As is often the case when a phrase which will live in history has been fashioned the newspapers hardly noticed it on the first morning. But on the second morning they were loud in their denunciations, and many of Campbell-Bannerman’s normal supporters in the centre of the party agreed with the editors in thinking that he had gone too far. Asquith, upon the basis of the fust day’s reports, had written his leader a letter of remonstrance. He was however courteous and even friendly in tone and put much of the blame on Morley:

  SECRET

  20 Cavendish Square, W.

  15th June, 1901

  My dear CB,

  I have read—with more regret than surprise—the report of last night’s dinner. Through no fault of yours, the proceedings were turned into an aggressive demonstration by one section of the party, J.M.’s ‘ impromptu,’ in particular, being of the most challenging description.

  I am very glad I was not there, and I shall do all I can to discourage reprisals, but I do not know with what success. It is a ‘ regrettable incident.’

  Yours ever,

  H. H. Asquithl

  On the third day after the speech, Campbell-Bannerman explained to the House of Commons that he had intended no calumny against the army. But he also repeated, in relation to the system of warfare, the offending word, “ barbarism.” Haldane rose later in the debate to rebuke his leader for its use and to dissociate himself from him; and in the division which followed fifty Liberals showed their disapproval by abstention.r />
  At this stage, Asquith, who had been amongst the fifty, moved for the first time into the leadership of the Imperialist (and, as it had now clearly become, anti-Campbell-Bannerman) wing. Hitherto, although he had always been regarded as the strongest man amongst them, he had left the running to Grey or Haldane or Fowler. In his constituency he had spoken clearly, but outside it, both in the House and in the country, he had tried to avoid the issue. But on June 20th he dined with the South Essex Liberals at the Liverpool Street Hotel and took the opportunity to reply moderately but strongly, not so much to Campbell-Bannerman himself as to those like Morley and Labouchere who had been encouraged by the leader’s apparent lurch leftwards to mount a whole series of new attacks on the Imperialists:

  “I am speaking not for myself alone,” Asquith said, “ but for a large number of my colleagues in the House of Commons and for a still larger body of Liberal opinion outside. Those, I say, who have taken that view may be right or they may be wrong. That is not what I am concerned to argue; time will decide. We have never sought to make the holding of that view the test of the political orthodoxy of our fellow Liberals, and I hope that we never shall. But that makes it all the more necessary for me to say in the plainest and most unequivocal terms, that we have not changed our view, that we do not repent of it, and that we shall not recant it.”

  Thus there began what Henry Lucy described as the process of “ war to the knife and fork ” within the Liberal Party. Where the South Essex Liberals stood on the issue is not known, but there were many people outside who were delighted with Asquith’s speech. Fowler wrote on June 23 rd a letter of great enthusiasm, congratulating Asquith on his “ defence of the true Liberalism.” “We must smash the talk about secession (that is what Harcourt, Labouchere and Co. desire),” he significantly continued. “ We represent the majority of the Party. We are loyal to its principles and traditions.... ”m At this stage the Liberal taste for dispute by public banquet began to get out of control. It was decided to hold another dinner to Asquith in recognition of his speech at the Liverpool Street Hotel. The process looked unending, but it was not allowed to continue without protest. On June 28th forty Liberal M.P.s wrote a joint letter to Asquith explaining that, despite their regard for him, they would not come to the dinner because they saw its purpose as disruptive. The letter was organised by Reginald McKenna, later to be one of Asquith’s closest Cabinet colleagues, and Charles Hobhouse, who became Financial Secretary to the Treasury. Amongst the signatories were George Whiteley and the Master of Elibank, both of whom were to serve as Chief Whip under Asquith.

  A day later there arrived a letter of protest from Lord Kimberley who had been Rosebery’s Foreign Secretary. “ I am much concerned,” he wrote, “ that you are to attend a dinner, which I am told is to be the occasion of a further demonstration against the recent speeches of C.B. and others on the South African situation.”n Then, on July 10th — the dinner was to be on July 19th — Campbell-Bannerman himself wrote, in direct and pressing terms. “ Will you let me appeal to you,” he said, “ to get it (the dinner) postponed to a later time when all the Party will join in it, and when it will have lost all that tinge of sectional feeling which undoubtedly will cling to it now.”0

  This appeal was written on the day after a special party meeting which Campbell-Bannerman, following the announcement of the dinner plans, had felt it necessary to summon in order to strengthen his authority. At this meeting he secured a unanimous vote of confidence and the solace, such as it was, of supporting speeches of varying enthusiasm from Harcourt, Grey and Asquith. They all said that they wished him to continue as leader, but the last two made it quite clear that this was only so long as, on the central issue of the day, they were not expected to follow his lead. Nevertheless the party meeting had slightly strengthened Campbell-Bannerman’s position, and in his winding-up speech he had stressed that what he had objected to were not honest differences of view but separate organisations established for the purpose of “ perpetuating and accentuating ” these differences.

  Such an organisation he undoubtedly regarded as being behind the dinner. Asquith nevertheless did not respond to his appeal to postpone it. “I have communicated with those who are responsible for the dinner,” he wrote on the same day that he had received Campbell-Bannerman’s letter, “ and I find the arrangements are too far advanced to make postponement possible except at the cost of enormous inconvenience to people in all parts and countless explanations and misunderstandings.” He added, that in the circumstances, he “ would not take amiss the abstention of many of (his) friends,” but hoped that “ those who are coming will be allowed to do so without any suspicion of ulterior motives.’’p

  Campbell-Bannerman fortunately interpreted this letter as meaning that Asquith could not postpone the dinner (“ no one more than Asquith himself wishes the Asquith dinner to be given up,” he wrote to a friend at the time), and this view is endorsed by Asquith’s official biographersq. But it is contradicted by a letter which Grey wrote to Asquith on July 12th. “ I have seen Rosebery . . .”, he wrote, “ I told him about C-B’s letter and that you and some of us were very annoyed at such a move being made; and that the suggestion of a dinner of union at which he should preside could not be entertained....” The contradiction would have been more direct, of course, had the letter been from Asquith to Grey; but relations of the closest confidence existed between the two men and there is no reason to think that Grey misrepresented Asquith’s position to Rosebery. In the next passage of the same letter, Grey suggested that Asquith’s mood at the time was more intransigent than Campbell-Bannerman allowed for, but that there was a deliberate arrangement by which he should stand a little aloof from the other Liberal Imperialists. Rosebery, it appears, told Grey that he did not want “ to put the fat in the fire before the dinner was held.” Grey passing this comment on to Asquith said: “ I thought personally that making the fat frizzle could not hurt us, but that I thought it would be better that you should not be privy to any letter he (Rosebery) wrote.”r

  On the other hand Asquith had written back to the forty Liberal M.P.s in most conciliatory terms, saying that he entirely understood their attitude, but stressing that the dinner was no secessionist move: “ Having differed from our friends upon one question, we are told that before long we shall be found in general agreement with our opponents. This is an illusion which in my opinion cannot be too promptly and effectively dispelled.” To achieve this, he insisted, would be his main purpose at the dinner. The probability seems to be that Asquith was not averse to using the dinner as a show of his own strength as against that of Campbell-Bannerman, that he could not in any event have put it off without letting down his Imperialist associates, but that he was a little nervous that it might take on too extremist a tone.

  In addition, however far he himself might have been from secession, he saw a danger that many important Liberal supporters might do precisely this unless they could be assured of the strength of the moderate wing. Lord Durham1; for instance, wrote to Asquith from Newmarket on July 2nd saying that he wished to attend the dinner as “ a silent supporter.” “ I hate politics,” he continued; “ but, of course, am interested in the future of Liberalism. . . . But, I shall not assist, with my money, an opposition which does not recognise its duty to the Empire in preference to a desire to make itself disagreeable to the present Government.”s

  1 1855-1928, the grandson of “Radical Jack.” His letter sounded as though he might have inherited more of the wealth than of the radicalism of his forbear.

  So the plans for the dinner proceeded. Then, at the last moment, Rosebery threw an extraordinarily timed spanner into the Liberal Imperialist works. When asked to preside at the dinner he had declined, perhaps wisely from everybody’s point of view. And when asked to speak at the annual meeting of the City Liberal Club at lunch-time on the same day he had also declined, accompanying this latter refusal with an anti “ methods of barbarism ” manifesto which was published in The Ti
mes on July 17th. Then, unnecessarily and unexpectedly, he had turned up at the luncheon meeting after all and had delivered a provocative, headline-catching speech. The result was, as a Times leader commented the next day, that “ the attention of the public, which was fixed beforehand on the late Home Secretary, has been suddenly turned to the late Prime Minister.”

  The Liberal Party, Rosebery said, must “ start with a clean slate as regards those cumbersome programmes with which (it was) overloaded in the past.” As for himself: “ I must plough my furrow alone. That is my fate, agreeable or the reverse; but before I get to the end of that furrow it is possible that I may find myself not alone.” This intervention led even Grey to deliver a sharp public remonstrance. It had been made at so ill-chosen a time as to suggest that some hidden vein of jealousy of Asquith’s leadership of the Liberal right must suddenly have risen to the surface of Rosebery’s complex character. Why otherwise should he have departed, in a manner so likely to steal Asquith’s thunder, from his normal practice of giving weeks of prior build-up to his infrequent speeches? Yet on the following day he was writing to Asquith, blandly, admiringly, but without apology or apparent embarrassment:

  The Durdans,

  Epsom

  July 20 1901

  My dear A,

  I have just finished reading the banquet speeches,1 each and all of them with admiration. But yours is by far your finest and most complete speech, and you know how greatly I admire all your speeches. It seems to me faultless, and will I think rank as one of the memorable speeches of our time.