Asquith

by Roy Jenkins

  1907 also saw the marriage of Asquith’s eldest son Raymond to Katherine Homer, the daughter of his and Haldane’s old friend and confidante from Mells Park. Asquith’s first family were nearly all grown up. Raymond was well-established at the bar. “ Beb ” and “ Oc ” were both at Oxford. Violet was “out"' And Cyril, at Winchester, was on the brink of his Balliol scholarship. His second family was clearly not now going to increase beyond two. Elizabeth, the older of these, was ten, and Puffin (or Anthony) was five. Politically, there was little doubt that within a year or two he would take a further and final step forward; but from a private and family point of view it looked as though his life was already settled into a firm and lasting mould.

  1 This was on the occasion of Balfour’s first speech after his by-election return to the House. He had put a series of dialectically ingenious questions to the Prime Minister on the well-worn free trade issue. Campbell-Bannerman concluded his two-minute reply: “ They (the questions) are utterly futile, nonsensical and misleading. They were invented by the right hon. Gentleman for the purpose of occupying time in this debate. I say, enough of this foolery! It might have answered very well in the last Parliament, but it is altogether out of place in this Parliament. .. . Move your amendments and let us get to business.” (Hansard, 4th Series, V0L153. c. 992).

  AN ASSURED SUCCESSION

  1908

  Campbell-Bannerman, like Asquith, spent much of the autumn of 1907 in Scotland. Then, on the night of November 13 th, less than two weeks after his return south, he suffered a severe heart attack in Bristol, where he had gone to address the annual Colston Banquet. It was not until January 20th, when he returned from a protracted convalescence at Biarritz, that he was again able to devote much attention to official business. But he then enjoyed a final three weeks of full activity. “ (He) seemed to have recovered all his old buoyancy and energy,” Spender wrote.a During this period he presided over the Cabinets leading up to the King’s Speech at the opening of the 1908 session.

  The chronology of these weeks is important, because it has sometimes been suggested1 that Campbell-Bannerman’s illness and consequent replacement by Asquith was responsible for a crucial two years’ delay in the mounting of the Liberal attack on the House of Lords. This theory must rest upon the belief that Campbell-Bannerman wished to follow up his resolutions of 1907 with a Parliament Bill for 1908. Yet there was no hint of this in the Address. Instead, the Licensing Bill was once more given first place, and another attempt was to be made to get the Lords to accept the two Scottish land bills which had fared so badly at the end of the last session. The evidence seems clear that Campbell-Bannerman was not at this stage contemplating immediate constitutional legislation.

  1 Notably by Professor Emily Allyn, of Wilson College, Pennsylvania, in her Lords versus Commons. (New York, 1931)

  The Prime Minister’s final burst of vigour lasted only a fortnight into the new session. On February 12th he made his last speech in the House of Commons. That night he had another heart attack, and never again left his room in 10, Downing Street. For two or three weeks there seemed a reasonable prospect that he might once more recover. On March 2nd he wrote an optimistic letter to Asquith (for transmission to the Cabinet), and on March 4th he received a call from the King, who, on the following day, left for a six weeks visit to Biarritz, hoping that a change could be avoided while he was away. This hope proved ill-founded. As March wore on Campbell-Bannerman deteriorated steadily. Both inside and outside the Cabinet there was mounting pressure for a new Prime Minister. Since the beginning of the year the Government had been losing heavily at by-elections. These setbacks strengthened the demand for a leader who could take effective command. By the last week in March only two men were opposed to an immediate change, but they were both in crucial positions. The first was Campbell-Bannerman’s doctor, who wrote to Asquith warning him that any suggestion of resignation would be bad for his patient, and the second was the King, who was opposed to any course which might interrupt his holiday. The impasse seemed complete, particularly as Campbell-Bannerman himself, when his hopes of recovery disappeared, showed signs of wanting to die in office. On March 27th he sent for Asquith, and after thanking him for being a “ wonderful colleague, so loyal, so disinterested, so able,” took farewell of him in a manner at once gruff and effusive: “ You are the greatest gentleman I ever met,” Campbell-Bannerman is recorded as saying. “ This is not the last of me; we will meet again, Asquith.” b But he did not say when he was going to resign.

  A few days later the doctors completely changed their minds and pronounced an immediate resignation to have become imperative. Campbell-Bannerman accordingly wrote to the King on April 1st informing him that his wish for postponement could no longer be acceded to. The resignation was formally submitted two days later, and the King wrote to Asquith on April 4th, calling upon him to form a Government and summoning him to Biarritz. Throughout the period of speculation about the date of resignation there had been no doubt about the succession. Asquith was without a challenger in the Liberal Party. He had acted as leader throughout Campbell-Bannerman’s frequent absences; his general parliamentary ability was unequalled; and, although only 55 years old, his Cabinet seniority was exceeded only by that of Morley. The King had made the position explicit on March 3rd when, in preparation for his Biarritz visit, he had seen Asquith and told him that, although he hoped to avoid a change for as long as possible, it would be for him that he would send when one became necessary.

  The King also warned Asquith on this occasion that if Campbell-Bannerman resigned before Easter the new Prime Minister would be asked to go out to Biarritz to kiss hands. Asquith appears to have offered no remonstrance against this suggestion (it would, no doubt, have been ungracious to have done so), although when the time came it proved a highly inconvenient arrangement, and one which provoked widespread eyebrow-raising. Buckle of The Times wrote incredulously to Asquith on April 5th about the rumour of his visit to Biarritz. He could not believe that it was true. It was “ so unlike His Majesty’s usual consideration for his Ministers and for public business.”c In fact something much worse was nearly true. A few days before the King had been proposing a plan by which, after Asquith’s own visit to Biarritz, the new Cabinet should go over to Paris en masse in order to meet the King and receive their seals of office in the Hotel Crillon. Lord Knollys, the King’s private secretary, wrote to Asquith on March 30th full of dismay at this suggestion. Would Asquith add his protest to the very strong one which Knollys himself had already made? But two days later Knollys was writing again, full of relief this time, to say that the King had agreed to come home for the seals of office ceremony.d

  The Biarritz part of the plan still stood, however, and on the night of Monday, April 6th, having that afternoon moved the adjournment of the House of Commons until April 14th, Asquith left Cavendish Square after an early dinner. He drove to Charing Cross and took the nine o’clock continental boat train for Paris. There were no crowds for he kept his plans secret. He travelled alone, without even a private secretary. But his secretaries were on the platform to see him off, as were Edwin Montagu and Reginald McKenna. “ Mr. Asquith,” The Times recorded, “ wore a thick overcoat and a travelling cap pulled well down over his eyes.” Margot could not go to Charing Cross. “ Not feeling well enough to go to the station we parted on the doorstep and he waved to me out of the motor as it disappeared round the corner of the Square,” she wrote. What happened subsequently is best related in a letter which he wrote her on the Wednesday afternoon:

  Hôtel du Palais, Biarritz,

  (Direction Pattard)

  8 Ap. 08

  Darling—only time for a line. I saw Reggie Lister for a few minutes in Paris and then came on here by a train which got in about J past 10 last night. Fritz Ponsonby met me at the station and I am comfortably lodged in the King’s Hotel.

  This morning I put on a frock coat, and escorted by Fritz and old Stanley Clarke went to the King who was similar
ly attired.

  I presented him with a written resignation of the office of Chr. of the Exr; & he then said ‘ I appoint you P.M. & First Lord of the Treasury ’ whereupon I knelt down and kissed his hand. Voilà tout!

  He then asked me to come into the next room and breakfast1 with him. We were quite alone for an hour & I went over all the appointments with him. He made no objection to any of them and discussed the various men very freely & with a good deal of shrewdness.

  I am going to dine in his company at Mrs. Cassel’s villa tonight. The weather here is vile beyond description, pouring rain & plenty of wind. I leave at 12 noon to-morrow (Thursday) and arrive Charing Cross 5.12 Friday afternoon. You will no doubt arrange about dinner that evening2—Love,

  Ever yourse

  Asquith reached Paris at 10.20 on the Thursday night. At the Gare d’Orsay he was greeted by a crowd of journalists, but he did not do much to make their visit worthwhile. “ I have only one thing to say to you: good evening,” he announced. “ Mr. Asquith then entered a carriage and drove to the Hotel Ritz,” it was reported.

  The next evening he was back in London, although not at 5.12, admirers of the old London, Chatham and Dover Railway may care to note. It was five to six when the train steamed into Charing Cross* The arrival was less clandestine than the departure had been. There was a large welcoming party on the platform, including Margot, his son Raymond, his daughter Violet and his sister Mrs. Wooding. Outside the station, despite the fact that it was a cold, dull evening, there was a large enough crowd to raise a sizeable cheer most of the way to Downing Street, where Asquith went briefly to enquire after Campbell-Bannerman. He then drove home to Cavendish Square, accompanied by Margot, Haldane and Vaughan Nash, the private secretary whom he inherited from the old Prime Minister.

  The long railway journeys, inconvenient though they had been from many points of view, at least gave Asquith ample time for thinking about the distribution of government offices 011 the way out, and for writing letters of invitation on the way back. Some anticipatory correspondence had taken place earlier. On March 14th, Winston Churchill, whose claims for promotion to the Cabinet were not in dispute,1 had written to Asquith outlining his order of preference— amongst the possibilities which Asquith had discussed with him. First he put the Colonial Office, second the Admiralty, and a bad third the Local Government Board. As he had little training in the details of domestic politics and no experience of piloting a major bill through the House of Commons he thought that he would find the work of the Local Government Board anxious, thankless and exhausting. “ Dimly across gulfs of ignorance ” he could see the shape of a policy which he called the Minimum Standard. But he feared that an attempt to carry it out would bring him into collision with men like John Morley, who, after years of thought, had decided that nothing could, or should, be done f

  1 Despite his age (he was only 33) and the fact that it was less than four years since he had crossed the floor of the House of Commons. There had indeed been an earlier suggestion that he might be admitted to the Cabinet while remaining under-secretary for the Colonies, but the King had vetoed this, saying that he must wait for “ a real vacancy.”

  These difficulties Churchill did not have to face. In fact he was offered the Board of Trade, and accepted it with alacrity on April 10th.

  The other new appointment which aroused still greater interest was that of Lloyd George as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Asquith’s earlier intention had been to continue to fill this office himself, at least until the end of the session, as Gladstone had done in 1873-4 and again in 1880-2. He told the King of this at his audience on March 4th, and the latter, after being assured that there were precedents, said he thought it much the best arrangement.g' But Asquith later changed his mind, partly because the Gladstonian precedents were not very encouraging, and partly because he was persuaded that the promotion of a ‘man of the left' was necessary to adjust for the shift of balance following from his own replacement of Campbell-Bannerman. Once he had decided to divide the two jobs he was in no doubt that Lloyd George should be the new Chancellor. He made the formal offer to him immediately on his return from France, and received an enthusiastic acceptance on the Saturday. “ I thank you for the flattering proposal contained in your letter,” Lloyd George wrote, “ and even more for the generous terms in which it is conveyed to me. ... I shall be proud to serve under your Premiership and no member of the Government will render more loyal service and support to his chief. h

  Even so, the letter ended on a somewhat rancid note. The Cabinet list had been prematurely published in the Daily Chronicle, and it was suggested, from within the Cabinet, that Lloyd George was responsible. Churchill was asked by Asquith to raise the matter with the new Chancellor. He did so and reported at midnight on the Friday that Lloyd George “ denied it utterly.” In his letter to Asquith of the following day Lloyd George repeated the denial angrily and demanded to know which of his colleagues had made this “ amiable suggestion.” “ Men whose promotion is not sustained by birth or other favouring conditions,” he continued, “ are always liable to be assailed with unkind suspicions of this sort. I would ask it therefore as a favour that you should not entertain them without satisfying yourself that they have some basis of truth.”i

  Some of the other changes were grudgingly accepted by those involved. Elgin retired reluctantly from the Colonial Office and refused to become a Marquess. He was replaced by Crewe, who took on the leadership of the House of Lords from Ripon, but gave up the Presidency of the Council. Tweedmouth was offered this in place of the Admiralty, and at first wrote a sulky refusal, complaining that Asquith did not trust him and that he ought to have resigned long before rather than allow his estimates to be cut; but he eventually accepted. Reginald McKenna became First Lord of the Admiralty", the King stipulating that, this being so, Fisher should remain First Sea Lord. He apparently suspected, quite falsely, that McKenna would show himself an excessive naval economist.

  Morley remained as Secretary of State for India but removed to the House of Lords with a viscounty. “ I suppose ... I have a claim from seniority of service for your place at the Exchequer,” he had rather disturbingly opened to Asquith a short time before; “ but I don’t know that I have any special aptitude for it under present prospects,” he had more encouragingly continued.-? Some of the junior candidates for office created more difficulties. The most importunate of all was Asquith’s former pupil from the summer of 1874, when he had acted as a tutor in Lord Portsmouth’s household. This boy had now become Lord Portsmouth himself and had served as under-secretary for war in the previous Government. He first wrote asking for Cabinet rank, and when Asquith, who had enjoyed exceptional opportunities of judging his mental capacity, responded by dropping him from the Government altogether, Portsmouth began a series of protests which continued throughout the summer. He did not move the Prime Minister but he succeeded in getting his successor (H. T. Baker, later Warden of Winchester) blackballed at Brooks’s.

  The parliamentary secretary to the Admiralty wrote asking to remain in office with a peerage, but he too disappeared from the Government. And Charles Trevelyan, whose father, G. O. Trevelyan protested in terms which were rather blatantly nepotic for the head of such a radical family,1 never got into it. Nor was there any advancement for J. A. Pease, who begged to be promoted after “ eleven years’ work as a whip,” and pronounced himself ready, in an almost classical phrase for a suppliant, to respond to a telegram “ in about six hours at any time to talk things over with you.” Almost the only man who got anything by asking for it was Charles Masterman, who stipulated that he would not be parliamentary secretary to the Local Government Board unless the department was substantially reorganised; and Asquith agreed that this should be done.

  1 “Since our party came in,” he wrote to Asquith on April 15th, “ full recognition has been given to the past services of those who in old days served the country and the cause, by the employment of their sons and relatives who are
worthy of a chance in the career of administration. Now that several younger men have been placed in office, while my son is left out,

  I must protest, once for all, that I feel the exception made in our case very deeply.” (Asquith Papers, xi, ff. 100-1).

  183

  Amongst the spate of requests which Asquith received at this time, Augustine Birrell's acceptance of an invitation to stay in the same job, written from the Irish Office on April nth, stands out as a solitary example of a letter built round a joke (even if not a very good one) rather than a demand: “ I am sorry you have overlooked my claims upon the Chancellorship of the - Duchy! But am content to remain on here—where at all events you are are never dull”k