Asquith

by Roy Jenkins

  In either event in my opinion the issue of the election would be put in the utmost peril. It would be said that we were at issue about Home Rule, the Colonies, the Empire, etc., etc., and the defections of the whole of our group would be regarded as conclusive evidence. The tertius gaudens at Dalmeny1 would look on with complacency. I cannot imagine more disastrous conditions under which to fight a Free Trade election.

  And the whole responsibility, I repeat, would be mine. I could not say, after the offers made to Grey and you,2 that our group had been flouted, and the only ground I could take would be that I and not C-B must from the first lead the new H. of Commons.

  I could not to my own conscience or the world justify such a position.

  If the election were over, and Free Trade secure, different considerations would arise.a

  1 Rosebery, irritation at whose Bodmin performance helped to make Asquith more conciliatory towards Campbell-Bannerman during these negotiations.

  2 p. 156 infra.

  Grey saw the matter differently. The most moderate of the three at Relugas in September, he now became the most intransigent in London in December. This was partly because he was the least interested in office, and partly because of a certain awkward inflexibility in his character. As Arthur Acland had written about him to Asquith five years earlier: “ I think he is a man rather to see difficulties than to help people over them. . . .b In any event Grey went back to Campbell-Bannerman at ten o’clock on the night of the same Monday, “ all buttoned up ” as the latter described him, and firmly told the Prime Minister-elect that unless he went to the House of Lords he (Grey) would accept no office.

  This move of Grey’s was foolish as well as intransigent. Campbell-Bannerman, his biographer tells us, was “ greatly wounded and surprised ” by this interview. But he was only worried by it because he thought that Asquith as well as Haldane must be a party to the ultimatum. For Haldane—“ Schopenhauer ” as he derisively called him—he had at this stage neither affection nor respect. He was determined not to give him the Woolsack and would have been quite happy not to have him in the Government at all. Grey he regarded as much more useful, but, as his conversation with Asquith on November 13 th had shown,1 by no means indispensable. Asquith himself he did regard as nearly indispensable, and would have been hesitant about trying to form a Cabinet without him.

  Grey, however, unlike Campbell-Bannerman, knew perfectly well by the time of his Monday night interview, that Asquith was not with him in his ultimatum. He did not resent this. “ If you go in without me eventually,” he had written earlier that day, “ I shall be quite happy outside and I shan’t think it the least wrong of you... .”c But he did not comprehend that without Asquith to give it force his ultimatum was likely to be more irritating than persuasive. Campbell-Bannerman was in fact undecided about a peerage when Grey saw him. He was by no means confident about facing Balfour in the House of Commons, and in addition the advice of his Viennese doctor, on whom he leant heavily, was against the double burden.2 Grey turned what might have been an easy personal adjustment into a major political choice.

  On the following morning Campbell-Bannerman went to Buckingham Palace to kiss hands. In the event he failed to secure his sovereign’s hand for this symbolic act, but the King did not fail to slip in an expression of his own view that a peerage might be best for the new Prime Minister’s health. This did nothing to make the proposition more agreeable to Campbell-Bannerman. He merely assumed (and not without foundation) that Haldane had been intriguing with the King. Was Asquith a party to the plot? Campbell-Bannerman had seen him early that Tuesday morning before the visit to the palace, had told him of Grey’s attitude on the previous night, had expressed his own fears that he might be thought lacking in courage if he went to the Lords, and had asked for Asquith’s views. Margot Asquith recorded in her diary the account which her husband gave her of his reply:

  Henry answered that the position was almost too delicate and personal for them to discuss; but C.B. pressed him to say frankly everything that was in his mind. Henry pointed out what a fearful labour C.B. would find the combination of leading the House and being Prime Minister, as they were practically two men’s work; that no one could possibly accuse him of being a coward; that the House of Lords was without a leader, and that it was placing him (Henry) in a cruel and impossible position if under the circumstances Edward Grey refused to take Office; he was his dearest friend as well as supporter, and to join a Government without such a friend would be personal pain to him, as they had never worked apart from one another.d

  This was strong moral pressure, but it did not sound like an ultimatum; and the fact that it was not became completely clear when Campbell-Bannerman again saw Asquith soon after his return from the King, formally offered him the Exchequer, and received an unconditional acceptance. This acceptance more than outweighed the delicate pressure of the previous interview. As soon as he had received it Campbell-Bannerman telegraphed to Lord Cromer in Cairo and offered him the Foreign Office. This was an extraordinary move. Cromer was a great pro-consul, but he had no experience of British politics, he had never been a Liberal, and within two years he was to become an active (although moderate) Unionist. He was Grey’s first cousin, but this in the circumstances was a doubtfully conciliatory consideration. Fortunately, after twenty-four hours’ thought, he refused the offer on the ground of weak health.

  That evening before dinner Asquith went to Hatfield, to keep (with almost excessive social meticulousness) an engagement to join a Salisbury house party. Margot was there already, having arrived with her step-daughter Violet during the afternoon; and the fullest account of the events of the next few days comes from her diary.1 On this first evening of the visit she found her husband “ profoundly anxious.” He was apparently unaware of the Prime Minister’s offer to Cromer, but he had seen Grey again before leaving London and had found him as adamant as ever—“ in an uncompromising three-cornered humour.”

  1 There is a certain confusion of dates in these diary passages. Mrs. Asquith speaks in one place of the Hatfield visit having begun on Wednesday, December 6th, and in another of the Wednesday being the second day of the visit. It seems most likely that they went to Hatfield on the Tuesday, and returned finally to London on the Friday morning (December 8th).

  The chances of getting him to join seemed remote, and Asquith’s pleasure at office must have been considerably reduced by the separation from his friends which seemed likely to be involved. But he did not brood. “ That night at dimier at Hatfield,” Margot wrote, “ my husband looked worn out, and I admired him more than I could say for throwing himself into the social atmosphere of a fancy ball, with his usual simplicity and unselfcentredness.”e

  The next morning the Asquiths motored to London for the day. Asquith went to see Campbell-Bannerman in Belgrave Square and Margot went to their own house in Cavendish Square, where Herbert Gladstone came and gave her all the news. Asquith, as he told his wife that evening, when they had both returned to Hatfield, attempted a direct appeal to the Prime Minister:

  I said, “It is no use going over the ground again, my dear C.B. I make a personal appeal to you, which I’ve never done before; I urge you to go to the House of Lords and solve this difficulty.f

  Campbell-Bannerman received this appeal in a friendly but noncommittal way. His wife was arriving from Scotland that evening. When she came he would consult her and be guided by the result. And that was the end of the interview.

  Lady Campbell-Bannerman’s advice, conveyed over dinner, was decisively given for a policy of “ no surrender,”1 and thereafter the Prime Minister’s mind was not in doubt. He was unable to convey his decision to Asquith that evening, but he told Morley and Tweedmouth, who called at Belgrave Square after dinner. He also discussed with them certain alternative possibilities for the Foreign Office—Cromer’s refusal had arrived. Here Morley, despite what he was later to write about the “ unedifying transactions ” of the Liberal Imperialist group, played
an important part in urging Campbell-Bannerman to hold the door open to Grey. He scoffed at the Prime Minister’s other suggestions for the post, and he later wrote warning him against “ light-weights ” and pointing out that “ the F.O. is a terribly weak place in your armour.”g

  1 The fact that she put it in terms of defiance is a good indication of how self-defeating Grey’s move had been.

  Asquith meanwhile was back amongst the Hatfield festivities. But only for a short time. On the Thursday morning he again travelled to London and went once more to Belgrave Square. On this occasion his wife recorded him as reporting:

  He (Campbell-Bannerman) looked white and upset and began like a man who, having taken the plunge, meant to make best of it. He spoke in a rapid, rather cheerful and determined manner:

  “ I’m going to stick to the Commons, Asquith, so will you go and tell Grey he may have the Foreign Office and Haldane the War Office.”h

  Asquith duly conveyed these offers. He saw Grey, but failed to shake his intransigence. As soon as Asquith had left him, he wrote a letter of definite refusal to Campbell-Bannerman. This covered not merely the Foreign Office but any participation in the Government. He even raised again the difficulty of separation from Rosebery.

  Haldane was a more flexible proposition. Unlike Grey, he had been balked of the office which he coveted, but he had a livelier sense of political ambition. In some aspects of his temperament Grey was like Rosebery. He loved creating situations in which he could say no. Haldane was much more like Asquith. On his own terms if possible, he preferred the occupancy of the seats of power to the sterile pleasure of watching his inferiors try to fill them. Perhaps for this reason Asquith did not think it as necessary to see him as it had been to see Grey— despite the fact that he was available in London and, indeed, had Grey staying with him at his flat in Whitehall Court.

  Instead, Asquith went to the Athenaeum in the early afternoon and wrote Haldane a long letter for delivery by hand. The central part of this letter has already been quoted as an exposition of Asquith’s own reasons for accepting office.1 The beginning may now be added: “ I was empowered this morning to offer the Foreign Office to E. Grey, and an offer of the War Office will soon be on its way to you.” And the end: “ I write this now, because I see no chance of seeing you today as I have to go to the country,2 and that you may have these considerations in your mind when you receive C.B.’s offer. I don’t want in the least to attempt to influence your judgment; your position and Grey’s, as regards this particular point, are necessarily different from mine.

  1 See pages 151-2 supra.

  2 A defensively generalised expression, for Haldane knew perfectly well where Asquith was staying, and disapproved of his being away. “ To make things worse,” he wrote in his Autobiography (p. 168), “Asquith and his wife proceeded to keep an engagement to stay with the Salisburys at Hatfield.... Asquith came to town indeed during the day, but it was difficult to see him as much as the circumstances required.”

  But I need not say what an enormous and immeasurable difference your co-operation would make to me. Whatever happens nothing can change our affection and confidence.”i

  This letter was handed to Haldane at four o’clock, when he was presiding over a committee meeting at the Imperial Institute in South Kensington. At the same time he was given a letter from Campbell-Bannerman. This, somewhat confusingly, offered him not the War Office but the Attorney-Generalship. It added, however, that if he did not want that (which he did not) the Prime Minister would make other proposals “ involving Cabinet rank.”1 After his meeting Haldane drove home to Whitehall Court, calling on the way on Lady Horner, Asquith’s old correspondent of the early ’nineties, at Buckingham Gate. Lady Horner, he subsequently recorded, was a decisive influence turning his mind towards acceptance. But he still regarded himself as bound not to accept unless he could also change Grey’s mind. It was not difficult for him to see Grey. When he got home to Whitehall Court he found him lying on a sofa in his library “ with the air of one who had taken a decision and was done with political troubles.” Haldane talked to him for some time. Then, at Grey’s suggestion, they walked to Arthur Acland’s rooms in St. James’s Court. They were with him from 7.30 to 8.15 and “ he poured into (them) arguments about destroying the prospects of the Liberal Party.” When they left they went to the Cafe Royal and dined together in a private room. There, when they had finished their fish—perhaps because he missed the rest of it Haldane was very precise about the stage of the meal which had been reached—Grey agreed that it was his duty to accept office, provided that Haldane were included in the Cabinet.

  1 In those days the phrase carried its natural meaning—membership of the Cabinet. Today it is a polite euphemism for exclusion from that body.

  Armed with this news Haldane left Grey at dinner and rushed off to Belgrave Square in a hansom cab. Campbell-Bannerman came out from dinner to see him. He responded with pleasure to the news that Grey’s mind had changed and offered Haldane first the Home Office and then, surprised at his preference, the War Office. By ten o’clock on that Thursday night Haldane had returned to report to Grey in Acland’s rooms. The matter was finally settled the next morning when Grey called upon the Prime Minister.

  The Asquiths, at Hatfield, were cut off from these final moves. After sending off his letter to Haldane Asquith had returned there on the Thursday evening thinking that there was little chance of moving Grey.1 “ When Henry arrived I saw at a glance that it was all up,” Margot recorded. On the following morning when they travelled up to King’s Cross and opened The Times in the train they read the report of Grey’s refusal as the last word. But at Cavendish Square Asquith received a brief note from Haldane, written on the previous evening, telling him that Grey had agreed to “ reconsider his position.” On reading this he went off to find Haldane. By twelve he knew that everything was satisfactorily arranged.

  1 Sometime on that Thursday indeed he wrote the following note to Campbell-Bannerman:

  secret

  20 Cavendish Square, W.

  7 December, 1905

  My dear CB,

  I deeply regret both your decision and E. Grey’s.

  On the assumption that both are irrevocable, Crewe seems to me for many reasons the best man for the F.O.

  Yours,

  H.H.A

  (Campbell-Bannerman papers, 41210, 253)

  The filling of the other offices proceeded smoothly, and the Cabinet list was ready for the King on that same Friday, December 8th. Although only five of its members had ever held Cabinet office before it was a Government of unusual talent. It contained at least five ministers of outstanding intellectual quality: Asquith, Haldane, Morley (Secretary of State for India), Birrell (President of the Board of Education) and Bryce (Chief Secretary for Ireland). In addition there were men such as Lloyd George (President of the Board of Trade), Crewe (Lord President), John Burns (Local Government Board), Winston Churchill (under-secretary for the Colonies), and Grey, whose gifts differed widely both from those of the “ intellectuals ” and from each other, but which were at least equally remarkable.

  There was no question of the Cabinet being, in the phrase Asquith had used to Haldane, “ all of one colour.” The strict Gladstonian tradition was represented by Ripon (Lord Privy Seal) and Herbert Gladstone (Home Secretary) as well as by Morley and Bryce. The Prime Minister’s own outlook was closely reflected by that of the Lord Chancellor, Lorebum, and the Secretary of State for Scotland, John Sinclair. In addition, Lloyd George and John Burns were both regarded as men of the “ new left,” although the latter quickly developed into an outstandingly conservative minister. The “ moderates ” were represented not only by the famous three of the Relugas compact but also by Crewe, by Fowler,3 who was a vice-president of the Liberal League, by Lord Carrington4 (later Marquess of Lincolnshire), who was one of King Edward’s closest friends,5 and by Lord Elgin,6 to whom The Times gave the accolade of saying that he had never made a partisan speech. L
ord Tweedmouth (the former Chief Whip, who soon became insane) as First Lord of the Admiralty, and Sydney Buxton as Postmaster-General completed the Cabinet.

  The new ministers went to Buckingham Palace to receive their seals of office on the Monday afternoon. It was a day of exceptionally thick fog (even by Edwardian standards), and the atmosphere became even blacker while they were with the King, so that many of them had great difficulty in finding their way to their departments. The Liberal Imperialists were particularly unlucky. Haldane, Grey and Fowler left the Palace together in a hired brougham, but had to abandon it in the Mall. Grey spent an hour walking from there to the Foreign Office. Fowler merely succeeded in finding his way back to Buckingham Palace. And Haldane, clutching his seals in a bag, felt his way, as he rather curiously put it, “ along the horses’ heads,” until he arrived, exhausted and muddy, at the War Office, then in Pall Mall.

  Asquith, on his own, did rather better, and arrived in reasonably good order at the Old Treasury building on the comer of Whitehall and Downing Street. The department which he arrived to command was one which had changed little since the days of Gladstone’s first premiership. It had not grown at all; and in 1905, despite there being temporarily two joint permanent secretaries, the cost of salaries was actually lower than it had been in 1872. There were only twenty-two first division clerks (or administrative class civil servants as they would now be called), and the total staff of the department, messengers included, was barely 200.