Asquith

by Roy Jenkins

  The military situation has developed . . . and there is no doubt if we were to order a march upon Ulster that about half the officers in the Army—the Navy is more uncertain—would strike. The immediate difficulty in the Curragh can, I think, be arranged, but that is the permanent situation, and it is not a pleasant one. Winston is all for creating a temporary Army ad hoc—but that of course is nonsense ... This will be the third successive Monday that we have a “ crisis ” in the House.

  As the parliamentary situation developed, Asquith began to feel a little easier. On the Monday he wrote:

  What with Paget’s tactless blundering and Seely’s clumsy phrases, and the general Army position, I had rather a tough job to handle. A.J.B., who is the only quick mind in that ill-bred crowd, hit the right nail, or rather touched the sore spot.2

  1 Also, Asquith recorded, “ (contrary to my settled practice) I saw Geoffrey Robinson of the Times, & gave him a few hints of a quieting kind.”

  2 The inexcusable foolishness of the way in which Paget, apparently acting on the direct instructions of the Secretary of State for War, put the issue at his conference of senior officers.

  By the Wednesday he thought the opposition were winning his battle for him:

  Never in the whole of my experience at the bar and in Parliament have I seen a really strong and formidable case... so miserably presented and so coldly backed up. It is quite clear the Tories are thoroughly cowed over this army business; they think it is going to do them harm in the country. Our people on the other hand are really hot and excited—more than they have been for a long time, and I am beginning to believe that we are going to score out of what seemed an almost impossible situation.

  Unfortunately, if the Liberals were that week winning the battle in the House of Commons, they were losing it in the War Office. Gough, with his three colonels, was in London for Sunday and Monday. In his discussions at the War Office he showed an inflexible determination to get his own way. It was as though he were disciplining the Secretary of State and the General Staff. When it was suggested, in view of the misunderstanding, that he should go back and carry on as though nothing had happened, he declined absolutely—unless he were given a written assurance that the army would never be used to impose Home Rule on Ulster. After some havering Seely allowed Ewart to produce a draft of such an assurance. This came before the Cabinet on the Monday morning, March 23rd, and Asquith, after a short discussion, wrote out an amended and unexceptionable version in his own hand:

  “ You are authorized by the Army Council,” it ran, “ to inform the Officers of the 3rd Cavalry Brigade that the Army Council are satisfied that the incident which has arisen in regard to their resignations has been due to a misunderstanding.

  It is the duty of all soldiers to obey lawful commands given to them through the proper channel by the Army Council, either for the protection of public property and the support of the civil power in the event of disturbance, or for the protection of the lives and property of the inhabitants.

  This is the only point it was intended to put to the officers in the questions of the General Officer Commanding, and the Army Council have been glad to learn from you that there never has been and never will be any question of disobeying such lawful orders.”

  Seley was absent—he had been summoned to the King—when this was discussed. He returned to Downing Street just as the Cabinet was breaking up. The Prime Minister, according to a letter which Margot Asquith subsequently wrote to Lady Islington, gave him the document and he stuffed it in his pocket, and remained in the Cabinet room talking to John Morley. While these two were still talking, but after Asquith had left the room, a messenger arrived from the War Office to ask if Gough could have his reply. Seely and Morley—the one a notably incautious and relatively new minister but the other the most experienced member of the Cabinet—then proceeded to add two paragraphs of their own. One paragraph added nothing of substance; the other gave Gough far too much. They were as follows:

  His Majesty’s Government must retain their right to use all the forces of the Crown in Ireland, or elsewhere, to maintain law and order and to support the civil power in the ordinary execution of its duty.

  But they have no intention whatever of taking advantage of the right to crush political opposition to the policy or principles of the Home Rule Bill.

  How Morley ever came to take part in this totally unwarranted re-drafting is incomprehensible. Margot’s explanation, given in the same letter, was that “ J. Morley is quite deaf and much too vain poor dear to own up that he did not know what was going on (in the Cabinet)and this seems as good as any other.

  The document was then given to Gough. The brigadier was as insatiable as he was intrepid. He told French and Ewart that it was not good enough. He asked for a further written assurance that the correct interpretation of the last paragraph was that the army in Ireland would not be used to enforce the Home Rule Bill upon Ulster. After a little hesitation, French wrote “ That is how I read it. J.F. ” beside this interpretation. With this in his pocket Gough set off as soon as he could for Dublin. He was able to return in triumph. It was not surprising that Sir Henry Wilson, the arch Unionist intriguer in the War Office, wrote in his diary: “ So long as we hold the paper we got on Monday, we can afford to sit tight.j

  Asquith was not so fortunately placed. As soon as he saw the offending paragraphs—on the Monday evening—he realised that they could not be allowed to stand without giving away the entire position on civilian control over the army. Officers would have been persuaded back to duty at the price of extracting a policy concession from the Government. He immediately sent for Seely and told him that the additions must be struck out. It was too late. Gough had already taken the document to Ireland. Asquith’s only course was therefore that of public repudiation, although this would clearly make it difficult for Seely and the two generals to remain in office. How much he cared about losing Seely is doubtful. He liked him, but had by this stage lost all confidence in his judgment and sense—“ the greatest fool of all after Paget,” was Margot's description of him. But Asquith was most reluctant to see French go. “ French offered his resignation but has withdrawn it for the moment at any rate,” Asquith wrote. “ His position is a very difficult one, but he has been so loyal and has behaved so well that I would stretch a great many points to keep him.”1 This was written on the Thursday, although Asquith had already repudiated by inference both Seely’s added paragraphs and French’s special assurance.

  1 Margot Asquith (still in the same letter to Lady Islington) added an intriguing—but certainly unauthorised and probably inaccurate—gloss to this by writing: “ French put his name to what he thought was a Cabinet document so he said he had better go—he is a hot Liberal & of course comes back to a high place in a very short time.”

  On the Friday Asquith made a statement in the House of Commons promulgating a new Army Order, which was intended to clear up the whole position. He had hoped to do this at noon, after a morning Cabinet with French and Ewart in attendance. He then planned to take an afternoon motor drive with Miss Stanley. But the meeting was more protracted than he had anticipated, and he was forced to delay his statement until five, taking his motor drive first. The new order conveyed in different words the substance of the three original paragraphs.

  Asquith went to the Wharf for the Saturday and Sunday, where he had the Churchills and “ Bluey ” Baker, the under-secretary at the War Office, as guests. While there he contemplated the problem of how to fill Seely’s place—although there was still some doubt as to whether the resignations would take place—and decided that the most steadying solution would be to take the job himself.

  “ I started the idea of the two offices at once,” he wrote to Miss Stanley when he had returned to London on the Monday (March 30th), “ and I need not tell you that Winston’s eyes blazed and his polysyllables rolled, and his gestures were those of a man possessed. Even Bluey’s wary deep-set gaze lighted up. On Sunday Bongie (Bonham
Carter) arrived with a long hazy diplomatic document which Haldane had drawn up, & over persuaded the wretched 2 Generals to accept, as a pièce justificative for not resigning. I saw at once that from their point of view it was a sophistical evasion, and from ours a surrender of the whole position. Winston and Bluey quite agreed, & Bongie took back a discouraging negative.”

  Soon after Asquith got back to London on the Monday morning it was settled that the resignations were to take place:

  The Generals (i.e. French and Ewart) had come back to the position that as a matter of personal honour they must go. Poor Seely, who was there, of course was bound to follow suit. French behaved admirably, & when I told him privately that I thought of going to the W(ar) O(ffice), he was delighted and promised all his help. So then I proceeded to the King and put my scheme before him. He remarked—naively, as Bonar Law wd. say—that the idea had never occurred to him! But he was quite taken with it and gave it his emphatic approval. So after questions—as you will see by the papers—I threw two bornbshells on the floor of the House, and I think the effect was all that one cd. have hoped. On the advice of the Impeccable I cleared out at once, not wishing to incur a penalty of £500 for sitting after my seat was legally vacant.7 So I am no longer an M.P.

  At the end of that week, accompanied by his wife and elder daughter, Asquith went to Fife. “ Such a journey!! ” Margot wrote. “ I thought I shd. have died—I’ve never known the Tories so vile, so rude and so futile as now.” Asquith himself found the experience more encouraging:

  “ Wherever we stopped we had a cheering crowd, with a deputation, address & c,” he wrote to Miss Stanley, “ and the climax was at Edinburgh where the Waverley Station was simply packed. They cheered and reared & sang “jolly good fellow ” and “ Scots wha hae,” and I only protected Violet from loud demands for a speech by asking them to sing “ Auld Lang Syne,” of which they proceeded to give us 2 or 3 verses, ending up with “ Will ye noe come home again.” We arrived at last just before 8 at Cupar where there was a final demonstration.”

  On the Saturday afternoon he addressed a “wonderfully enthusiastic ” meeting at Ladybank. “ The Army,” he said, “ will hear nothing of politics from me, and in return I expect to hear nothing of politics from the Army.” He returned to London after two days, but he was still out of the House of Commons. It was another four days before he heard that no candidate had been nominated against him, and another five after that before, on Easter Tuesday, April 14th, he was able to take his seat.

  The Prime Minister’s decision to take over the War Office proved a successful and steadying move. “ The soldiers trusted Asquith,” was Mr. A. P. Ryan’s summing up; “ his massive common sense and refusal to be stampeded into the excitement of the moment proved invaluable.”k Nevertheless the Curragh incident and its repercussions left a legacy of bitterness and unrest in the army—particularly that part of it stationed in Ireland—which could not quickly be eradicated. This feeling was expressed with great forthrightness in a report written by Major-General Fergusson about April 20th. One of the troubles, he said, was the common belief that the General Staff would resign when the crisis came, accompanied by a conviction that “certain Officers holding high appointments, in and out of the War Office, are in the confidence of the Ulster Party, and are practically working against the Government and the constituted authority of the army.” Nor had the soft treatment of Gough and his three colonels helped. "These Officers returned covered with glory, while those who had taken the other line had had to put up with misrepresentations and reproach from their relations and friends. It is not surprising that many of them, especially the younger, are resentful, and inclined to think that they ' backed the wrong horse'l This document was at once an encouragement to firm civilian control of the army and an indication of how much damage had been done by Seely and Paget.

  The state of the army apart, Asquith’s Irish worries during that April would have been crushing to a man of less equable temperament. The King was pressing him hard to make further concessions to Ulster. In the week before Easter he had received what he described as 44 a rather hysterical letter from G.R.” This communication was an extreme example of royal pressure in favour of a particular policy.

  The King wanted the six counties to be allowed to contract out without a plebiscite and for an indefinite period.

  “Surely you could persuade Mr. Redmond and his friends ‘ to go to this length ’ for the sake of peace, which the whole country is longing for,” he wrote. “ I trust that you will lose no time to renew your conversations with Mr. Bonar Law and Sir E. Carson as you promised me. I repeat what I said to you last week, that I have every confidence in you. I have also absolute confidence in your ability to bring about a peaceful solution, whenever you put in force the great powers you possess. You appreciate I know the terrible position in which I shall be placed if that solution is not found. My duty will be to leave nothing undone which lies within my power to save Ireland from what you have yourself described as civil strife.”m

  But Asquith believed that he had already forced Redmond to the limit of what was reasonable. In addition, before any further meeting with Law or Carson could be arranged, there occurred the highly provocative illegality of the Ulster gun-running at Larne. This took place on the night of Friday, April 24th, and was reported to Birrell in the following telegram sent via Dublin Castle on the morning of the 25th:

  About 8 p.m. last night a large body of Ulster Volunteers Force armed with truncheons numbering about 800 mobilised at Larne under Sir William Adair and Major McCalmont, m.p. They drew a cordon round the harbour and vicinity and allowed no one to pass except a few on business; police and Customs officers particularly excluded; signals from sea had been observed and large numbers of motor cars arrived. Two steamers believed “ Mountjoy ” and “ Millswater ” discharged cargoes of what appeared to be arms and ammunition which were conveyed away by motor cars. Reporting fully today. Telegraph and telephone communication interrupted.n

  Aberdeen, the Viceroy, followed up this message with a telegram to Asquith urging the immediate arrest of McCalmont and Adair, and asking for authority to proceed even though he judged that “ the persons named and other leaders will be prepared to resist.” This request—and other possible courses of action—were considered by the Cabinet on the Monday morning. Three methods of procedure suggested by the Irish Law Officers were rejected. Instead it was decided, on the advice of Simon, that the proper course was to prosecute by what sounded the somewhat ineffective method of “ exhibiting an information ” in Dublin. Eventually, after Cabinets on four successive mornings, even this method of proceeding was abandoned. “ Please do not sign informations until further notice,” Asquith telegraphed to Birrell in Dublin as soon as the Thursday Cabinet broke up; and that was the end of the matter.

  The pressures which pushed the Cabinet towards this retreat were typical of those which always destroyed the possibility of resolute action against Ulster illegality. The King was firmly against prosecution, of course. But so was Birrell, the member of the Cabinet with direct responsibility, and so too was Redmond. The latter wrote insistently to Asquith on April 27th. He did not believe that any Irish problem could be solved by the application of the criminal law. Most insidious of all the influences, however, was the line taken by the Unionist leaders in the House of Commons debate on the Tuesday and Wednesday. Carson, in particular, let drop a few hints of moderation. Perhaps these were an invitation to a settlement. The Government, at any rate, was only too prepared to hope that they were and to abandon the possibly exacerbating prosecutions.

  Partly in genuine pursuit of this hope, and partly to satisfy the King, Asquith took part in further secret conversations on May 5th. Edwin Montagu’s house was once again the meeting place, but on this occasion the Prime Minister was confronted by both Bonar Law and Carson. Law did not depart from his usual mood of dogged pessimism, and the meeting was not fruitful. His party, he announced, were growingly averse to
any kind of settlement.” Nevertheless a little procedural progress was made. It was agreed that a committee stage for the Home Rule Bill would serve no purpose, and that it was better that any changes should be incorporated in a separate amending bill which would receive the Royal Assent on the same day as the Home Rule Bill itself. But it was not agreed what should be in this amending bill, and such agreement was of course a necessary prelude to its running a quick parliamentary course over the twin hurdles of the Liberal and Nationalist majority in the House of Commons and the Unionist majority in the House of Lords. Law and Carson insisted that the Home Rule Bill ought not to leave the Commons for the last time until the terms of a settlement were agreed.

  Asquith was unable to accept this last demand, if only for the obvious reason that it would have given the opposition complete control over the whole Home Rule parliamentary timetable. He was determined to get rid of the major bill before Whitsun, and this, at the price of another day of almost unprecedented disorder in the House of Commons, was satisfactorily accomplished. In the meantime, the Cabinet, to the accompaniment of insistent royal requests that the Ulster case should be met as completely as possible, was engaged in drafting the amending bill.

  The terms were announced after Whitsun1 and the bill was introduced into the Upper House by Lord Crewe on June 23 rd. It was obviously sensible to see what the peers would do to this measure before wasting the time of the House of Commons upon it. There was no need to wait long for an answer. Within little more than a week the Lords had re-fashioned the amending bill so as to make it accord with the most extreme Unionist demands. All the nine counties of Ulster were to be excluded, without plebiscites and without a time limit. For the first time Asquith was brought up against a complete impasse. Within a month the Home Rule Bill, protected by the Parliament Act, would at last be ready for the Royal Assent. Trouble with the King would no doubt have to be faced, but even assuming that this was overcome, how was the measure to be implemented? It would have been difficult enough to enforce it upon parts of Ulster in any event, but once the Government had publicly declared in favour of some form of exclusion, this became simply impossible. Yet the Lords would only allow the bill to be amended in a form that was unacceptable to the majority in the House of Commons. A settlement by negotiation had therefore become an urgent necessity for the Government. Asquith could only hope that the opposition, as the critical moment approached, had become equally worried by the dangers of continued deadlock.