Asquith

by Roy Jenkins

  In the meantime Asquith had to parry a whole series of House of Commons questions about the intentions of the Government both in regard to the resolutions and to the re-introduction of the Budget. In reply to these he used the phrase which was later to be most closely associated with his name. “We had better wait and see,” he said in reply to Lord Helmsley on March 3rd. He used the phrase in no apologetic or hesitant way, but rather as a threat; and he obviously liked it, for he repeated it at least three times, in similar contexts, between then and April 4th. It was a use for which he was to pay dearly in the last years of his premiership when the phrase came to be erected by his enemies as a symbol of his alleged inactivity.

  The Cabinet committee reported back in favour of resolutions which embodied the Campbell-Bannerman plan subject only to minor amendments.1 The problem of Grey’s threatened resignation then became acute. It was overcome by an agreement that the Parliament Bill, which was to follow immediately in the wake of the resolutions and to give legislative force to them, should have a preamble (which has remained a dead letter from that day to this) declaring that it was “ intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis.”

  1 The amendments were (1) that the provision for conferences between the two Houses was dropped, and (2) that it was laid down that the three successive sessions in which a bill must pass the House of Commons if it was to become law against the opposition of the House of Lords need not be in the same Parliament. There were three resolutions. The first said that the Lords could neither amend nor reject a money bill, and that the Speaker of the House of Commons should determine, subject to certain rules, what was and what was not a money bill. The second outlined the three session arrangement by which ordinary legislation could pass over the heads of the Lords, provided that not less than two years had elapsed between the first introduction of the bill into the House of Commons and its final third reading there. And the third declared that the maximum duration of Parliaments should be reduced from seven years to five.

  The problem of the Irish still remained. Lloyd George and Birrell saw Redmond and Dillon on March 21st, and the possibility of a modification of the Budget was discussed between the two sides. But the Cabinet later stiffened against such a course. It was considered at a series of meetings on April nth, 12th and 13th. After the last of these Asquith wrote to the King, who was again at Biarritz, announcing the stiffening: “After full consideration... your Majesty’s advisors are strongly and unanimously of opinion that to purchase the Irish vote by such a concession would be a discreditable transaction, which they could not defend.” v The King was further informed that it was “ possible and not improbable ” that this might involve the defeat of the Government.

  At the same meeting, however, the Cabinet took a further decision which made such a development highly unlikely. They agreed that if the Lords rejected the veto resolutions the Government would immediately launch the strongest possible constitutional counter-attack. And this, because it would open the way to Home Rule, was of far more importance to the Irish than any possible budgetary concessions, whether on liquor duties or anything else. There were other people in Ireland, as Joseph Devlin, a leading “Redmondite,” was a few days later to remind the leading Independent Nationalist, William O’Brien, besides distillers and landlords. The form of the counter-attack was outlined in a later section of Asquith’s letter to Biarritz:

  “ (Ministers) came to the conclusion that, (in the event of a Lords’ rejection of the resolutions), it would be their duty at once to tender advice to the Crown as to the necessary steps—whether by the exercise of the prerogative, or by a referendum ad hoc, or otherwise—to be taken to ensure that the policy, approved by the House of Commons by large majorities, shall be given statutory effect in this Parliament. If they found that they were not in a position to accomplish that object, they would then either resign office or advise a dissolution of Parliament, but in no case would they feel able to advise a dissolution, except under such conditions as would secure that in the new Parliament the judgment of the people as expressed at the election, would be carried into law.”w

  The form of this declaration was a little elliptical but the meaning was reasonably clear. Either the King would have to agree to a dissolution with guarantees that if the Government were again successful he would create sufficient peers to swamp the House of Lords; or he would have to accept the resignation of his ministers and let Balfour (if he would) try to govern against the wishes of the majority of the House of Commons—with all the hazards to the royal position which would be involved in such a course. The only possible escape from this difficult choice lay in Asquith’s suggestion that the issue between the two Houses might be settled by a referendum. There is an element of mystery about this. The Cabinet took the suggestion sufficiently seriously to order the preparation of a Referendum Bill. But when Asquith made a public statement of the Government’s intention on the day following his communication to the King, and used language in most respects identical with that of his letter, he omitted any reference to the referendum solution.

  The note which he struck was therefore still firmer. The Government Chief Whip was as impressed on this occasion as he had been depressed in February:

  “Thursday night,” he wrote, “saw a grand Parliamentary triumph for the Prime Minister. All his lost prestige has been recovered. He played a great part on a great occasion, and he announced the decision of the Cabinet in that wonderful language of his, and with a dignity that abashed some of the ruder spirits opposite who tried to interrupt. It was a stirring scene, not likely to leave the memories of those who witnessed it, nor (s/c) the enthusiasm with which the crowded Liberal, Nationalist and Labour benches cheered the Prime Minister.... I accompanied him to his room, and we were shortly afterwards joined by Churchill and Lloyd George, who came to offer him their congratulations. Under that modest, unassuming, almost shy nature —so often mistaken for coldness—the Prime Minister has a softness of character which attaches men to him humanly as firmly as his great intellectual gifts compel their admiration.”x

  After this speech the difficulties with the Irish evaporated. It remains difficult to see quite why they had ever looked so formidable. The Government was able to re-introduce the Budget and to get it through the House of Commons by April 27th. The vote on third reading was 324 to 231, 62 of the Irish voting with the Government. On the following day the Lords passed it through all its stages, without divisions, in the course of a few hours. Lansdowne and his followers were prepared to recognise that the January election had settled the issue of the Budget, even if not the wider constitutional question. Parliament, having missed any real Easter holiday, then adjourned for a ten-day spring recess.

  That evening, after Parliament had risen, Asquith went to Buckingham Palace. “ I had a good talk with the King this evening and found him most reasonable,”y he wrote to his wife. Then he attended a dinner at the Savoy Hotel, given by Lloyd George to celebrate the passing of the Budget. Asquith left early in order to motor to Portsmouth with the McKennas. There he embarked on the Admiralty yacht, Enchantress, and set off, with the First Lord and his very young, recently acquired wife for companions, on a ten-day cruise to Portugal and Spain. The political outlook was still far from reassuring. But at least it looked a little better than at any time since the January election. The form of the battle seemed reliably predictable. If the Lords remained intransigent another election would have to be faced. If the Government won the King must be forced to create peers, or at least to use the threat of creating them. No doubt that would involve some distasteful audiences, for the Sovereign was clearly distrustful of the whole constitutional policy of the Government. Guided by the urbane and moderate Liberalism of Lord Knollys, he was however unlikely to resist in the last resort. There was one hazard for which neither Asquith nor anyone else made allowance. It did not occur to the Prime Minister that on his visi
t to Buckingham Palace before leaving London he had seen King Edward for the last time.

  1 He probably had some difficulty in the Treasury as well. On April 7th, Sir George Murray, the Permanent Secretary, wrote to Asquith: “ I think the Budget is fairly ship-shape now. The two largest blots on it are (1) the reversion duty—which is iniquitous in principle, but will not otherwise do very much harm; and (2) the Petrol Tax, which I believe to be quite unworkable. ...” (Asquith Papers, box 22, f. 123).

  2 These were by far the most controversial part of a controversial Budget. As introduced, they provided for (i) a tax of 20% on the unearned increment in land values, payable either when the land was sold or when it passed at death; (ii) a capital tax of |d. in the £ on the value of undeveloped land and minerals; and (iii) a 10% reversion duty on any benefit which came to a lessor at the end of a lease. The first two provisions were modified, with the Chancellor’s consent, during the Committee Stage of the Finance Bill. The yield, and consequently the social effect, of all these taxes proved disappointing. After 1918 they were repealed, ironically enough, by a Government over which Lloyd George was presiding. In reality much the most important part of the 1909 Budget, for future social change, passed with comparatively little notice. This was the introduction of surtax (or super-tax as it was then called). Lloyd George levied it at the rate of 6d. in the £ on the amount by which incomes of £5,000 or more exceeded £3,000.

  3 following year, a step which had in any event been made necessary by checked consumption and diminished revenue; but the Cabinet was against such a bargain.

  4 He had been appointed immediately after the election in spite of the view of his predecessor, J. A. Pease, that he was “ a bit too scheming.”

  5 Independent Nationalists.

  A TRIAL OF STATESMANSHIP II

  1910-11

  By May 6th Asquith and his party had completed their visit to Lisbon, where they had been feted by the Portuguese royal family (“ The Queen ... is still handsome, and like all the Orleans family, quite good company,” the Prime Minister recorded), and were steaming towards Gibraltar. A few hours before they arrived a wireless message was received from Lord Knollys with the information that the King had become gravely ill and was in a critical condition. On arrival at Gibraltar Asquith discovered that the 72 hours in which Enchantress could return to Plymouth was, surprisingly, less than the journey would take by train. He therefore ordered an immediate turn-round. A short time after they had left, in the early hours of Saturday, May 7th, he received a further message, this time from the new King George V, informing him that King Edward was dead. Later he recorded—for publication—his thoughts on that night:

  I went up on deck, and I remember well that the first sight that met my eyes in the twilight before dawn was Halley’s comet blazing in the sky.... I felt bewildered and indeed stunned. At a most anxious moment in the fortunes of the State, we had lost, without warning or preparation, the Sovereign whose ripe experience, trained sagacity, equitable judgment, and unvarying consideration, counted for so much. For two years I had been his Chief Minister, and I am thankful to remember that from first to last I never concealed anything from him. He soon got to know this, and in return he treated me with a gracious frankness which made our relationship in very trying and exacting times one, not always of complete agreement, but of unbroken confidence. It was this that lightened a load which I should otherwise have found almost intolerably oppressive: the prospect that, in the near future, I might find it my duty to give him advice which I knew would be in a high degree unpalatable.

  Now he had gone. His successor with all his fine and engaging qualities, was without political experience. We were nearing the verge of a crisis almost without example in our constitutional history. What was the right thing to do? This was the question which absorbed my thoughts as we made our way, with two fast escorting cruisers, through the Bay of Biscay, until we landed at Plymouth on the evening of Monday, May 9.a

  On the following Tuesday Asquith held a Cabinet and also had his first audience with the new King. On the Wednesday he moved a vote of condolence in the House of Commons and delivered a notable eloge of King Edward. On the Thursday he held another Cabinet, but these meetings were not concerned with the major constitutional issue. They were occupied with arrangements for the change of reign, and in particular with a proposed alteration in the Royal Declaration (of faith) so as to make it less offensive to Roman Catholics. But the constitutional issue simmered under the surface. What was to be done in the new circumstances? Were immediate “ guarantees ” and an early dissolution to be demanded from King George as they would have been from King Edward? All Asquith’s instincts recoiled from this. He had been in no hurry to tender unpalatable advice to the old King, and he was doubly reluctant to do so to the new one. Although King George V was a man of forty-five when he succeeded, and had seen far more of State papers during his period as Heir Apparent than ever his father had done, Asquith was greatly struck by the contrast between the worldly experience of King Edward and the unsophisticated mind and tastes of his son. This made him feel that it would be unfair to confront King George with a most delicate decision at the very outset of his reign. He was not alone in feeling this. Harcourt, the most determinedly radical member of the Cabinet on the constitutional issue, had written to him on the day of his return from Gibraltar urging, on the ground of public feeling about the King’s death, the postponement of the conflict until the autumn, with no election until January 1911.b Others may well have spoken to him in the same sense.

  In any event, despite the lack of Cabinet discussion, Asquith felt justified in telling King George when he saw him again on May 18th, that he would explore the possibility of compromise. “We had a long talk,” the King recorded. “ He said he would endeavour to come to some understanding with the Opposition to prevent a general election and he would not pay attention to what Redmond said.”c This interview over, Asquith attended the royal funeral on May 20th and then rejoined Enchantress for the remainder of his cruise. This time he went up the West coast to Skye, and occupied himself mainly by reading and preparing a long constitutional memorandum for the new King-

  At the first Cabinet after his return, on June 6th, a general political discussion led to “a practically unanimous desire” to try the method of a constitutional conference with the opposition leaders. Balfour and Lansdowne, when approached, responded eagerly to the suggestion, and the conference was able to hold its first meeting (in Asquith’s room at the House of Commons) on June 17th. The participants were the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, Crewe and Birrell from the Government side, and Balfour, Lansdowne, Austen Chamberlain and Cawdor from the opposition. Twelve meetings were held before the end of July and some progress appeared to have been made. There was then an interval until early October, Lansdowne having stood out against a proposal for holiday meetings at Crewe’s country house on the ground that he did not wish to be thought “softened by the excellence of Crewe’s champagne.” After this came two brief but intensive series of meetings, separated by another fortnight’s adjournment, until November 10th.

  The King, not unnaturally, was throughout an enthusiast for the idea of the conference. Militant Liberals, the Irish and the Labour Party, equally naturally, were a good deal less enthusiastic. They saw it as a device for removing the cutting edge from the Government’s constitutional policy. But they need not have worried. The conference never came close to success. A Unionist memorandum, presented at one of the early meetings, proposed that legislation should be divided into three categories: financial, ordinary and constitutional. In respect of each of these three categories unresolved difficulties arose. So far as the first category was concerned it was proposed that the Lords should explicitly abandon any right to reject or amend money bills, provided that measures with “ social or political consequences which go far beyond the mere raising of revenue ” should be excluded from this category. But although there is some conflict of evidence it is doubtful
whether the Government representatives ever accepted such a sweeping exclusion. Had they done so, hardly a single Budget from that day to this would have been statutorily protected against the interference of the peers. In regard to “ ordinary ” legislation it was agreed that when a bill within this category had been twice rejected by the Lords its fate should be determined by a joint sitting of the two Houses. But what was to be the composition of such a joint session? The key to this, as Lansdowne pointed out, was agreement on a scheme for a reformed House of Lords; and this was never near.

  Constitutional or “ organic ” legislation raised still greater difficulties. The Unionists wanted such measures, if they were twice rejected by the Lords, to be submitted to a referendum. The Liberals, Asquith’s mind having turned increasingly against such an innovation, preferred totally to exempt a closely limited list of such measures from the operation of the Parliament Act. But what should be on such a list? The Unionists were determined that it should include Home Rule, and the Liberals were equally determined that it should not.1 This was the nub of the disagreement on which the conference broke down. The man who was primarily responsible for the failure was Lansdowne. Of the other principal participants, Asquith, Balfour and Lloyd George were all anxious for a settlement. But Lansdowne was a Southern Irish landlord who had never forgotten the Land League. He was determined to do nothing to assist the passage of Home Rule, and he pursued his determination with stubborn resource.