Asquith

by Roy Jenkins

  At first there was a plan, fostered by Blakiston, the President of Trinity, to run Randall Davidson as a clerical candidate against Asquith, but the Archbishop refused and wrote to Asquith expressing the hope that he would be elected without a contest, although not failing to point out that his own support came from a “ rather big group.” Then Cave, the Lord Chancellor of the day, was enrolled as a substitute candidate. He was at once a friend of Asquith’s, the least distinguished occupant of the Woolsack of the first thirty years of this century, and an Oxonian of no great university fame. None of these considerations disqualified him from the support of the bulk of Oxford M.As. They were determined to pay off some party scores against Asquith, and perhaps to make a mild mockery of his title as well.

  “ Lord Oxford,” Birkenhead wrote to The Times, “ is the greatest living Oxonian. If he were a Conservative he would be elected by acclamation. To reject him because he is a Liberal is to admit partisan prejudices as narrow as they are discreditable.” But the “ partisan prejudices ” were freely admitted. Asquith got much the more distinguished list of supporters, but, as he noted, “ unfortunately it is not the elect who form the big battalions of voters.” The “ cavemen ” also had their published lists of adherents, mostly the lesser known, but including a fair number of Heads of Houses and, “ of all people,” Lord Robert Cecil. Essentially, however their strength was inarticulate, hidden away in country rectories, and quiet manor houses. It showed itself on the days of the poll. Asquith was defeated by 987 votes to 441.

  Although he had expected defeat, he felt it heavily. Desmond MacCarthy, who knew him well, wrote that it affected him “ more than any disappointment, save one, in his life after he ceased to be Prime Minister.” The successful candidate, Lord Cave, held the Chancellorship for only two years. Edward Grey (who left Balliol without a degree) was then elected without opposition.

  Politics provided Asquith with little consolation. The two-headed leadership of the Liberal Party posed impossible problems. Asquith, in the Lords, exercised titular authority over the whole party. Lloyd George, in the Commons, was chairman of the small parliamentary party. The armies to be led, even had there been no question of sharing the command, were hardly adequate to the reputation and experience of either. But the command had to be shared: it was like appointing Field-Marshals Haig and French to the same infantry battalion and expecting the result to be a contented co-operation.

  Asquith made some attempt to get back on to reasonable personal terms with Lloyd George. Margot and he even had him to luncheon at Bedford Square—with the Queen of Roumania, Desmond MacCarthy and Viola Tree—an event which would have seemed inconceivable five years before. But Asquith’s heart was hardly in this rapprochement; and Lloyd George’s certainly was not. His position had perhaps become the more difficult of the two. His fall from power had been more recent and more precipitate. His international fame was unparalleled, and his energy, at this stage at least, not only appeared to be, but was much greater than Asquith’s. Yet he had to occupy the subordinate position.

  There was one respect, however, in which his position was far from subordinate. He had the money. The Lloyd George Fund far exceeded any sums which the Liberal Party as such was able to command. Lloyd George was determined to preserve this position, and the power which it gave him. He argued that the terms on which the Fund had been raised made it illegal for him to hand it over to the Liberal Party. At one stage the Liberal Shadow Cabinet proposed that this should be tested before a Chancery lawyer, but it would have required more than counsel’s opinion to make Lloyd George hand over these resources to the Chief Whip.

  The issue naturally caused great bitterness within the Liberal Party. The separate existence of the Fund was a constant reminder both of the incompleteness of the Liberal re-marriage and of the profitable if doubtfully respectable past of the Liberal Coalitionists. Nor did Lloyd George try to use the Fund in such a way as to assuage the bitterness. At the 1924 election he had not hesitated to force a reduction in the number of Liberal candidates from a projected 500 to 343. The money was there, but he made only a relatively small sum (£60,000) available.

  Asquith responded with some impatience and more distaste. He disliked concerning himself with money, most of all political money. He believed that such matters should be left to the Chief Whip and not obtrude upon the party leader. But Lloyd George made the continuation of this old practice impossible. Asquith either had to raise a substantial sum under his own aegis or see his authority drained away by the pull of Lloyd George’s money. Accordingly, in January 1925, he launched the so-called Million Fund Appeal. The sponsoring body was the National Liberal Federation, and the purpose was clearly to make Asquith and the party independent of the money which Lloyd George would only grudgingly and conditionally dispense.

  The Appeal was not a success. Some money came in, but not nearly enough. Partly, no doubt, this was because of lack of confidence in the future of the Liberal Party generally. But it was also due to the existence of the Lloyd George Fund. This pervasive cache was responsible both for the launching and for the failure of the Appeal. Rich Liberal supporters did not see why they should subscribe when the leader of the party in the House of Commons had large sums of money—to which they had probably contributed—already at his disposal.

  The failure of the Appeal weakened Asquith vis-à-vis Lloyd George. This was pointedly brought home during the autumn of 1925. Lloyd George had presided over a committee of enquiry charged with a review of Liberal land policy. The result was a controversial scheme, which was strongly opposed by a number of leading Liberals, notably Runciman, Charles Hobhouse and Mond. They protested to Asquith against Lloyd George mounting a public campaign in favour of his own proposals before they had been accepted by the party. Asquith asked Lloyd George about his intentions. Lloyd George replied intransigently that he proposed to act in accord with “ the whole tradition of independent Liberal initiatives... ranging from the anti-Corn Law League, through the Liberation Society to various campaigns for local option and even prohibition.” Asquith then wrote one of the few letters of rebuke which he ever sent to Lloyd George. There was to be a conference to thrash the whole matter out. In the meantime he “ strongly deprecated a great campaign led by the Liberal leader in the House of Commons on an issue which was not accepted as (party) policy.p

  The effect or the rebuke upon Lloyd George was negligible. He continued his campaign (supported by his own Fund); the conference broadly endorsed his policy; and Asquith had to come into line with a speech at a joint meeting in February, 1926. This incident did much both to disenchant Asquith with the terms on which he held the Liberal leadership and to weaken his always precarious post-1922 relationship with Lloyd George. It only needed one more incident to provoke a severance. This incident was quickly provided.

  The General Strike began on May 3rd, 1926. On that day the Liberal Shadow Cabinet met, and there seemed to be no great difference of opinion amongst those present (including Lloyd George) as to what the party attitude should be. On the following day Asquith spoke in the House of Lords, unreservedly condemning the strike and supporting the Government’s efforts to resist it, although adding some words of criticism of their handling of the coal dispute. In addition, he and Grey each sent messages in a similar sense to the emergency paper, the British Gazette, and Simon used the House of Commons to condemn the strike as illegal. But Lloyd George spoke, if not in a directly contrary sense, at least in a very different one. He condemned the Government more than he condemned the strike; and he wrote a syndicated article for the American Press (a regular commitment at the time), which was pessimistic about the Government’s ability to win the day.

  As a result of these differences, Lloyd George did not attend the next meeting of the Shadow Cabinet (on May 10th), and wrote saying that he was refraining from doing so on policy grounds. Asquith at first did not appear to take this defection too seriously:

  “When I came up yesterday morning to our �
�� Shadow Cabinet ’ at Abingdon Street,” he wrote to Mrs. Harrisson on May nth,

  “ there was one notable absentee—Ll.G.—who was in the sulks, and had cast in his lot for the moment with the clericals—Archbishops and Deans and the whole company of the various Churches (a hopeless lot)—in the hope of getting a foothold for himself in the Labour camp. He is already, being a creature of uncertain temperament, suffering from cold feet. So much so, that I have a message this morning from Miss Stevenson asking me to arrange for a joint meeting in July at Carnarvon, which he and I are to address!”q

  A few days later, perhaps because of the representations of colleagues, or because of reflection on previous difficulties, Asquith came to take a more serious view of the matter. On May 20th, he wrote Lloyd George a long and somewhat portentous letter. He rehearsed the events leading up to the meeting of May 10th:

  All my colleagues attended with the notable exception of yourself. The reasons for your absence, as set out in a letter dated the same morning, seem to me to be wholly inadequate.... It was, in my judgment, the primary duty of all who were responsible for Liberal policy, and certainly not least of the Chairman of the Parliamentary Party in the House of Commons, at such a time to meet together for free and full discussion, and to contribute their counsels to the common stock. Your refusal to do so I find impossible to reconcile with my conception of the obligations of political comradeshipr

  After despatching this letter Asquith retired to Castle Howard in Yorkshire. While there he was pressed by his closest colleagues, including his host, Geoffrey Howard, to announce that he would explain his whole position in an early public speech. But he refused to do more than telegraph a peremptory instruction for the publication of his letter on May 20th. He greatly overestimated the degree of Liberal support which this would win. Nor did he allow for the obvious consideration that Lloyd George would respond by himself publishing a persuasive and subtle reply. This was issued on May 25th. The effect was made more damaging by the non-publication of Lloyd George’s original letter of May 10th. It looked as though Asquith had started a largely unprovoked quarrel.

  He returned to London to find a situation of unforeseen difficulty. On June 1st, he wrote to the Chief Whip what was in effect a reply to Lloyd George’s letter of May 24th; he could no longer bring himself to communicate direct with the leader in the Commons. In this letter to Sir Godfrey Collins Asquith laid great stress on Shadow Cabinet responsibility, equating it with the real thing: “ I have sat in many Cabinets under various Prime Ministers, and I have not known one of them who would not have treated such a communication from a colleague, sent at such a time, as equivalent to a resignation.” He also raised, for the first time, the question of his own position:

  I am this month completing forty years of service to the Liberal Party. For a considerable part of the time I have been its Leader, and I have honestly striven, during the last two years, to recreate and to revive the broken fabric of Liberal unity. It has been a burdensome, and in some of its aspects, a thankless task. I will not continue to hold the leadership for a day unless I am satisfied that I retain in full measure the confidence of the party.s

  On the same day twelve of his leading colleagues1 wrote to him (and published in The Times) a letter of unqualified support. But, once again, it was “ not the elect who form the big battalions of voters.” From outside the inner circle the response was different. On June 3rd the London Liberal Candidates Association recorded its “ profound dismay (at) any intention to exclude Mr. Lloyd George from the Councils of the Liberal Party.”t On June 8th the Liberal Parliamentary Party voted by twenty to ten to deprecate “ the publicity given to the differences between the Liberal leaders ” and to urge the restoration of unity. This was near to a vote of censure upon Asquith. On June nth, the Liberal and Radical Candidates Association, striking a slightly more conciliatory note, appointed a deputation to convey to him their desire for unity under his leadership.

  1 Lords Grey, Lincolnshire, Buckmaster, Buxton and Cowdray; Sir John Simon, Sir Donald Maclean, Sir Godfrey Collins; Runciman, Vivian Phillipps, Geoffrey Howard and W. M. R. Pringle.

  He never saw that deputation. On June 12th he suffered a slight stroke and was incapacitated for nearly three months. He was unable to attend the annual meeting of the National Liberal Federation at Weston-super-Mare, at which he had intended to fight back. For his convalescence he went once more to Castle Howard. Slowly, over the summer, he recovered his health, but not his political position. Back in London, at the end of September, he faced the end of the road. He attended a final, sad and hopeless “ conclave of the faithful ” at Edward Grey’s house. When it was over he wrote to Margot:

  The alternatives are to lead a squalid faction fight against Ll.G. in which he would have all the sinews of war; or to accept his money and patch up a hollow and humiliating alliance. I am quite resolved to do neither, so I shall faire mes paquets, for which I have ample justification on other grounds, age, etc.w

  For private circulation he wrote a long pièce justificative beginning resignedly: “ The disintegration of the Liberal Party began with the Coupon Election of December 1918. It then received a blow from which it has never recovered.” Publicly he announced his resignation in a short, dignified letter to the heads of the English and Scottish Liberal Federations. This was published on October 15th, 1926. For that same night he had arranged a farewell meeting at Greenock. He travelled to Scotland with a large party. Grey, Simon, Runciman, Maclean, members of his family, and many others were present on the platform. His thoughts can hardly fail to have gone back to another October evening, thirty years before, when he had himself sat on the stage of the Empire Theatre in Edinburgh and supported Rosebery’s farewell speech.

  Asquith’s was much shorter and less self-regarding. But the occasion was at least equally moving.

  “The meeting at Greenock,” he wrote two days later, “ ... was unique in my experience: at moments thrilling in its intensity. There were a lot of my old and trusty friends from Paisley there, as well as good and true men and women from all parts of Scotland. It was sad, however necessary, to have to cause so much pain. But I have not a doubt that I have taken the only wise and honourable course.” v

  The end of Asquith’s leadership had been a painful and protracted business. He had stayed too long in an impossible situation, believing, falsely, that the Liberal Party could be revived by its old leaders, and feeling it his duty to hold on for the sake of his small band of faithful followers. But after the harsh death, the Greenock meeting and the response it evoked provided a funeral more appropriate to the great past which lay behind him.

  Between Greenock and Asquith’s own death there was an interval of only sixteen months. At first his health was quite good again. He was even able to play golf. His interests remained as wide as ever. He was buying books and reading them, and working hard on another publication of his own (Memories and Reflections). He saw most of the new plays and films and even musicals of any note. He paid two or three visits a week to galleries and exhibitions, and kept fully alive the strong interest in contemporary painting and sculpture which he had developed since 1918. He made occasional speeches, in the House of Lords and elsewhere, and was constantly motoring to and fro between Sutton Courtney and Bedford Square, and about the countryside. He wrote frequent letters to Mrs. Harrisson, and he presided, benign and detached as he had always seemed, over the variegated and sustained social life of the Wharf. His mind remained balanced, tolerant and eclectic, his private edge of comment assured and sharp.2 His life was not quite what it had been, but it was neither unoccupied nor dismal.

  Early in 1927 he suffered a sudden loss of power in one leg. At first the trouble was only momentary and he was able to spend some of January and most of February in the South of France; in March he spoke in the House of Lords. Then his symptoms returned and he was forced for several months to submit to a wheel-chair. This experience had a deeply lowering effect upon his spirits. He had b
een used for too long to nearly perfect health to be able to take easily to an invalid’s regime. Even his correspondence faltered. But by the later summer there was an improvement. He went for several weeks in September to North Berwick and wrote of his “ powers of locomotion ” returning. He motored over to Glen and “ picnicked in the open.” He lunched with Balfour at Whittinghame and was tinged with jealousy to find him “ still a keen player at lawn tennis.” He even thought of playing golf—although in fact he did not do so. He worked a little at his book most mornings and went for a motor drive most afternoons. Only “ the persistence of execrable weather ” marred this last Scottish holiday.

  In mid-October Asquith moved south to Castle Howard, and went from there to York on the 19th, where he received the freedom of the city and responded with his last public speech. He was at the Wharf for a few weeks and then went with Mrs. Harrisson to see an exhibition of pictures at Norwich and to stay one night with Venetia Montagu at Beccles, which was nearby. It was his last excursion. On his return to Sutton Courtney he found himself unable to get out of his motor car, and never again succeeded in mounting the stairs to his own room.

  Thereafter the decline was rapid, although uneven. His illness was a hardening of the arteries, which at times affected his mind and produced confusion about his surroundings. He suffered the intermittent delusion that he was kept an unwilling prisoner at the Wharf, and responded to this by attempting to make plans for an escape to London. At other times his mind was perfectly clear. He received visitors with pleasure, although he watched them go with apprehension. On January 21st, Vivian Phillipps, his private secretary of the post-war years, went to see him. Phillipps wrote: