Asquith

by Roy Jenkins

  The crucial expenditure questions, as usual, related to the armed services. Here Asquith was greatly helped by Haldane, whose War Office administration was as economical as it was efficient. His estimates for the year 1907-8 showed an unrequested saving of £2m. But the demands of the Admiralty, a constantly recurring source of dissension within this pre-1914 Liberal Government, were already causing trouble.

  Asquith’s position on this issue was a little ambiguous. On the one hand he was a Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer, the inheritor of the retrenchment traditions of Gladstone and Harcourt. On the other, he was the leader, within the Government, of the group which believed in a strong Britain. Sometimes he sought to compromise his two responsibilities by seeing proposed expenditure as militarily unnecessary. Thus, on December 30th 1906, he wrote to Campbell-Bannerman: “I am much disquieted by Tweedmouth’s memorandum on Navy Estimates... . The enclosed article from today’s Spectator— which is not in any sense pre-disposed to economy in these matters— suggests that we are going ahead in the matter of construction far beyond any real necessity.”e The irony of an “ Imperialist ” Chancellor writing in these terms to a “ Little Englander ” Prime Minister cannot be escaped; but Asquith never pushed his opposition to the estimates to the extent which Gladstone and Harcourt would have considered necessary, and which Lloyd George was to attempt in the future. As a result questions of naval construction led only to a growling dispute under his Chancellorship and not to open crisis as was later the case.

  Another of Asquith’s responsibilities—semi-departmental this time perhaps—was to be the chief keeper of the free trade shrine. For a time after the crushing victory of 1906 there was little attempt to invade it. But in the spring of 1907 a conference of dominion Prime Ministers assembled in London and the majority of those who came used public as well as private pressure to urge imperial preference on the British Government. Deakin and Lyne of Australia, and Jameson and Smartt of Cape Colony were particularly active, not only in argument with Asquith and with Churchill (his chief assistant on this matter) at the sessions of the Conference, but also at meetings and banquets outside, many of them organised under opposition auspices. These activities had no effect on the Government’s policy—Churchill had declared at an early stage and in characteristic terms that the door to a preferential system had been “ banged, bolted, and barred ” by the election result—but they naturally produced some resentment amongst ministers. Campbell-Bannerman, tactfully purporting to blame the “ imperialists ” at home rather than the dominion Prime Ministers, delivered a sharp retort on May 10th: “ They hold us up to obloquy as indifferent to the cause of the Empire when all we do is to claim for ourselves the same freedom which these self-governing Colonies and communities enjoy, and which nothing on earth can tempt them to forgo.”f

  It was noticeable that Sir Wilfrid Laurier of Canada, the most experienced of the dominion leaders, and General Botha of the Transvaal, perhaps the wisest amongst them, held themselves aloof from the pressure of their colleagues. Laurier was as interested in imperial preference as anyone, but both he and Botha subordinated it to the absolute right of any member of the British family of nations, including the mother country, to be mistress of her own trading policies. To balance their stubbornness on the fiscal issue the Liberal Government had the great advantage, in the eyes of most of the colonial leaders, of the rapid advance towards full self-determination which they were making in South Africa.

  The dominant issue in the life of the Government was not of direct Treasury concern: it was the lack of progress of the general legislative programme. When the new Parliament met, the huge Liberal majority in the House of Commons was confronted by an almost equally large Unionist one in the House of Lords. It quickly became clear that the opposition leaders in both Houses were prepared to accord no real primacy to the elected chamber. Occasionally Balfour and Lansdowne instructed the peers to make a tactical show of restraint. More frequently they suppressed their delicate susceptibilities and encouraged a slaughter of Liberal bills on a scale from which their more robust predecessors, the Duke of Wellington or Sir Robert Peel, would have recoiled in horror.

  The first victim was the Education Bill. This bill was designed to remedy some of the more keenly-felt grievances of the Nonconformists, while leaving intact the 1902 administrative structure. It was introduced into the House of Commons by Augustine Birrell on April 9th, 1906, and immediately produced a storm of controversy. This came not only from the Unionist Party, but also from the Roman and Anglican churches. It was controversy along well-worn lines. The liturgists had had their way in 1902. The free churches had responded by rallying to the Liberal Party and ensuring that education was one of the two or three central issues of the electoral battle. This rallying of Nonconformists had helped to produce the great radical majority, and they could lay a strong claim to priority of relief. But the peers completely declined to recognise the force and freshness of the mandate behind the measure. When the bill reached them in the autumn, after a strenuous passage through the House of Commons, they treated it exactly in accordance with the instructions they were given by Balfour. They let it through on second reading, and then proceeded so to amend it in committee as not merely to destroy but to reverse its original purpose. In the form in which it returned to the Commons, the bill would have given the upholders of denominational teaching a still more favourable position than they enjoyed under the 1902 Act.

  There followed a period of skirmishing between the two Houses. The King tried unsuccessfully to promote a compromise and achieved only an abortive conference between three representatives of the Government, headed by Asquith, three of the opposition, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. By the middle of December it was obvious that complete deadlock had been reached. The Government, full of growls against the enormity of the peers’ behaviour, had no option but to abandon the bill.

  The other principal bills of the session received mixed treatment from the Lords. The Plural Voting Bill was handled with even less respect than the Education Bill; it was simply rejected on second reading. But the Trades Disputes Bill, in reality the most controversial of the three, was made the occasion for a display of tactical restraint. There were two reasons for this. The first was that the peers preferred for the moment to attack the “ political ” reforms of the Liberal Government than to run head on into a clash with organised labour. The second was that the place where this bill had aroused most controversy had been within the Cabinet itself; the Unionists strategists no doubt thought that this dissension might be more effectively promoted by keeping the bill alive than by treating it like the Plural Voting Bill.

  Asquith was in the centre of the Cabinet controversy over the Trades Disputes Bill. There was no division about the need to give a greater protection to Trade Union funds than that which existed after the Taff Vale and Quinn v. Leatham decisions. The dispute arose out of how this was to be done. Asquith and other lawyers wished to proceed by the indirect method of restricting the law of agency. This method had the advantage of appearing to give no favouritism to the unions, and the disadvantage of being so circumlocutory that it aroused no Labour enthusiasm. At first the lawyers carried the day, and a bill along these lines was introduced by the Attorney-General. It was coldly received by the powerful new Labour group, and one of its members, Walter Hudson, countered by introducing a private member’s bill based on the alternative method of approach—that of giving a direct exemption from actions for damages to trades union funds. The Prime Minister listened to the arguments deployed in favour of this bill, and proceeded, with a sudden swoop, to accept its principles on behalf of the Government.

  The coldness then passed to the lawyers in the Cabinet, and it was not until August that the matter was resolved by amending the principal clause in the Government bill so as to incorporate the substance of Hudson’s proposals. Asquith accepted the position reluctantly. He had a determined hostility to giving a specially privileged legal position to any gro
up, but he never contemplated resignation on the issue. He had no wish to magnify the difference with the Prime Minister. His relations with Campbell-Bannerman had become steadily closer and warmer since the formation of the Government, and this, as his official biographers point out, “ was his sole difference of any importance with Campbell-Bannerman in the period in which he served with him as his principal lieutenant.”g Instead he decided to face the issue in the House of Commons. Unnecessarily in view of his lack of departmental responsibility, he intervened at the committee stage and made it clear how reluctant a convert he was to the clause, but attempted to justify it on the ground that it gave an equally direct exemption to unions of masters as to those of men. It was a courageous if unhappy intervention.

  The history of this bill shows how indefensible on principle was the attitude of the peers to different pieces of Government legislation. If the object was to delay ill-considered measures upon which the electorate had not pronounced, the constitutional argument for rejecting the Trades Disputes Bill was far stronger than for so treating the Education and Plural Voting Bills. But the Lords were not greatly concerned with building up a constitutional case for themselves. They simply wanted to inflict as much damage as possible upon the Liberal Government.

  How could the Government resist this damage? After the withdrawal of the Education Bill in December, 1906, Campbell-Bannerman played with the idea of an immediate dissolution, with a campaign on the straight issue of the supremacy of the Commons. Cabinet opinion was firmly against such a course. The electorate, it was felt, would judge the Lords not by constitutional propriety, but by the popularity of the measures they had destroyed; and the Education Bill did not have a wide enough appeal to be a firm basis for victory. A further consideration was the comparative poverty of many Liberal members. A second election within twelve months would put a heavy financial burden upon them. And there was always the risk, despite the favourable evidence of the by-elections which had so far taken place, of destroying the great majority for which the Liberal Party had waited for so long.

  When these arguments were forcibly put by Asquith and others, the Prime Minister did not resist. He swung into agreement. But in subsequent months, as the Government embedded itself still more deeply in the morass prepared by Balfour and Lansdowne, he sometimes expressed regret that the bolder course had not been takenh The true argument against this course was, not that it was too bold, but that it would have accomplished little. In 1910, when the Government had a specific plan for dealing with the Lords, two elections and immense travail were necessary before it could be carried through. In 1906-7 the Liberals would, almost without doubt, have secured a bigger majority than in 1910. But would this consideration alone have enabled them to achieve a quick solution without the starting advantage of clear, agreed proposals?

  The alternative to dissolution, in the language of the day, was held to be the policy of “ filling the cup ”—of giving the Lords so many measures to wreck that, in the process, they would both demonstrate beyond doubt their own iniquity and offend every interest from which the Liberal Party could hope for support. But this was too supine a policy for any Government to pursue wholeheartedly. The price in terms of prestige and of the morale of its supporters, both in the country and in the House of Commons, was too great. During the 1907 session, therefore, the Government havered between this policy, a second one of threatening an immediate attack on the Lords, and a third one of attempting to formulate compromise measures which might produce some sort of legislative harvest.

  Thus the King’s Speech, in February, gave pride of place to a major Licensing Bill—a measure as certain to be slaughtered by the Lords as any which could be thought of. But it also referred to “ unfortunate differences between the two Houses,” and announced that “ His Majesty’s Ministers have this important subject under consideration with a view to a solution of the difficulty.” Then the Licensing Bill was postponed, and replaced as the main legislative business of the early part of the session by compromise measures on education and Ireland. The latter was described by the Chief Secretary as a “ little, modest, shy, humble effort to give administrative powers to the Irish people.” Both these bills suffered from the disadvantages of making some enemies but no friends, and had to be withdrawn for lack of support.

  In the meantime the Government had been trying to formulate detailed proposals for dealing with the Lords. A Cabinet committee was instructed to deal with this, and reported in May. It recommended that where differences between the two Houses arose they should be settled at joint sittings, attended by all the Commons and a delegation of 100 peers. In other words a Liberal Government with a majority of more than 80 to 851 would be given immunity from the depredations of the peers, but one with a smaller majority would be left entirely at their mercy. Campbell-Bannerman greatly disliked this scheme, which he thought would actually make matters worse for a Liberal Government with a “ normal ” majority, and he circulated a memorandum stating both his objections and his alternative proposals. These were for a revival of John Bright’s old scheme of a suspensory veto, restricting the peers’ right of delay to two sessions. If in the third session the bill were again sent up from the Commons it could then become law independently of any action which the House of Lords might take.

  1 It was proposed that all peers holding ministerial office should be members of the delegation.

  The Prime Minister’s memorandum effectively killed the joint session plan of the Cabinet committee, but it did not automatically secure the acceptance of his own proposals. An alternative plan for submitting bills held up by the Lords to a referendum was exhaustively discussed. This would have involved a far sharper break with the established practices of parliamentary government than any diminution of the powers of the Lords. Nevertheless Asquith subsequently confessed that he had “ coquetted ” with the idea. But he did not do more. And towards the end of a long series of Cabinets he helped to secure a solidifying of opinion behind the Campbell-Bannerman proposals. These were then presented to the House of Commons in the form of a resolution on June 24th. A three day debate, opened by the Prime Minister and wound up by Asquith, led to a vote of 432 to 147 in favour of the resolution.

  It was a resounding demonstration, but its only immediate result was to give the Liberal Party a policy for dealing with the Upper House. This was an advance; but until it was put in a form less innocuous than a Commons’ resolution it had no effect on the powers of the peers. They rounded off the session by wrecking two Scottish land bills and substantially amending and weakening an Irish bill on the same subject.

  With the end of this session, on August 26th, 1907, came the effective close of Campbell-Bannerman’s parliamentary career. He appeared in the House of Commons only for another ten days, at the beginning of the following February. Even during his two full sessions as Prime Minister he had been a notably intermittent performer, leaving many of the details and difficulties of leadership to Asquith. This was the period when “ send for the sledge-hammer ”—a tribute more to the force and reliability than to the elegance of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s debating—was one of his favourite cries. It was not that Campbell-Bannerman was unable to deal with the House of Commons. From the moment of his successful rebuke to Balfour1 in March, 1906, he achieved a sureness of touch which had always eluded him as leader of the opposition. But his wife’s ill-health combined with his own to keep him away a great deal.

  Lady Campbell-Bannerman’s protracted illness took a turn for the worse in the early spring of 1906, and between then and her death at Marienbad six months later her husband gave a clear priority to looking after her. He performed his duties as Prime Minister (with remarkable skill in the circumstances) during the time which was left spare. Then, within five weeks of her death, he suffered a first heart seizure of his own; and this attack was twice repeated during the next fifteen months. But he was more active during this later period than he had been while his wife was ill.

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bsp; During these early years of the Liberal Government a crop of physical misfortunes befell the wives of leading ministers. Only a few weeks after the general election of 1906 Edward Grey’s wife was thrown from a dog-cart while out driving, and died three days later. For a short time all his old doubts about office revived, but they did not persist. Then, in February 1907, Margot Asquith, after her usual wearing pregnancy, suffered her fifth and last confinement. The result was as disappointing as on the first and third occasions: the child died within two days of its birth. And there followed a repetition of the desperate sleeplessness and sustained ill-health which had afflicted her ten years earlier.

  This major vicissitude apart, Asquith’s non-official life during his period as Chancellor proceeded smoothly and agreeably. Office imposed no great strain on him. He was always quick in the despatch of business, and he was somewhat less busy than in his last years at the bar, when he had been trying to combine an exacting practice with the leadership of the free trade campaign. Long holidays (or, at least long periods of relaxed work away from London) were still thought perfectly compatible with ministerial responsibility. In 1906 the family again went to Glen of Rothes for August and September, and in 1907 they took a house near Dingwall on the Moray Firth for the same months. Asquith himself also fitted in a fortnight’s February holiday in Rome before the beginning of the 1907 session.

  Then, in the autumn of that year the pattern of life changed somewhat, for he and his wife acquired effective possession of Archerfield, a substantial (but now ruined) Adam house on the Firth of Forth near North Berwick, which belonged to Margot’s brother Frank Tennant. This they kept for five or six years and normally occupied from mid-August to the end of the Christmas holidays. Asquith was not of course there for the whole of these prolonged autumns, but his periods of residence often amounted to several months a year. The house had the advantage of being near his constituency, although it was a good deal better placed for looking at it—the southern shore of the Kingdom of Fife was often visible across fifteen miles of sea—than for visiting it, which involved a tedious journey through Edinburgh. Still nearer to Archerfield than East Fife was Arthur Balfour’s house. Whittinghame was only a few miles away, and Asquith when there sometimes had the pleasure of sharing the same golf links with the leader of the opposition. They both played frequently, but the choice of courses in the area was so wide that they did not necessarily meet often—Archer-field had its own private nine-hole course, and Balfour was frequently immersed in the rival attractions of philosophy and lawn tennis neither of which drew Asquith. Private relations between the two men were always cordial, and they had many mutual friends.