by Roy Jenkins
Asquith received the news at sea. He had gone with McKenna, one of his closest friends in the Cabinet, on an Admiralty yacht cruise to Spain and Portugal. Near Gibraltar the first disturbing bulletin had been received. The yacht had been ordered to turn round and make full steam for Plymouth. Before reaching the Bay of Biscay the final news had been received. Asquith has recorded his thoughts 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 life 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 which lightened the 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 impalatable.
‘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 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 destroyers, through the Bay of Biscay, until we landed at Plymouth on the evening of Monday, May 9.’g
The shock affected different people in different ways,1 but few in the world of politics were unmoved by it. And many much further away from the Throne were equally affected. The Victorian age had accustomed the British people to long reigns and to the occupation by their Sovereign of a dominant position in the family of European royalty. King Edward’s death destroyed both these conventions. The Edwardian period, which in fact possessed little of that tranquil and assured dignity with which the personality of the monarch has since invested it, had shown itself to be but a brief epilogue to the reign of the old Queen. And King George was very different from his father. He had not been brought up to reign. He had lived, first as a naval officer and then as a country gentleman, a life far removed from high politics. He was bored by foreigners, he disliked smart society, he had no interest in clever conversation. He did not inspire the German Emperor, as his father had done, with feelings which were a mixture of respect and resentful envy. He had not been, and was never to become, a leader of European society.
From the Prime Minister’s point of view the most important difference between the new King and his father was the former’s lack of political experience. In fact, King George had seen far more of state papers during his period as Heir Apparent than had King Edward. Perhaps therefore he appeared as a tyro more because of his unsophisticated mind and tastes than because of newness to the job. But whatever the reason it is undoubtedly true that Asquith felt that King Edward had been able to look after himself and find his own way through constitutional difficulties in a way that King George was not. However unlikely the principals, most Prime Ministers at the beginning of a new reign have half a desire to play the Melbourne.
It was therefore natural that Asquith, who, we have seen, had been in no hurry to tender unpalatable advice to King Edward, should have found procrastination given a new lease of life by the accession of King George. At one of his first private audiences the Prime Minister, as recorded in the King’s own words, ‘said he would endeavour to come to some understanding with the Opposition to prevent a General Election and (that) he would not pay attention to what Redmond said.’h
This endeavour took the form of an approach to Arthur Balfour for a two-party constitutional conference. The suggestion was eagerly taken up by the Unionists—the Morning Post and the Observer had indeed advocated a move along these lines within a day or two of the death of King Edward, and Austen Chamberlain had told Lansdowne during the train journey back from the funeral at Windsor that any further move by the Lords on the reform resolutions would be most unfortunate. Opinion on the Government side, not unnaturally, was less enthusiastic. The Nationalists (except, paradoxically, for O’Brien and his followers) were very restive, the Labour Party was suspicious, and Josiah Wedgwood1 led a mild revolt of advanced Liberals. But Asquith had committed himself with the King and was, in any event, firm in his own mind; and so the plan went forward. For six months the constitutional struggle retired behind closed doors.
IX The Attempt at Compromise
On June 16 the arrangements for the conference were completed. It was to have eight members: the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, Crewe, and Birrell from the Government; and Balfour, Lansdowne, Austen Chamberlain, and Cawdor from the Opposition. A statement was issued that the negotiations were to be entirely untrammelled and the proceedings strictly confidential. The press was informed when meetings were held, but of nothing else. Asquith and Balfour agreed upon a general scheme of discussion, which, in the words of Asquith’s biographers, was to cover the following points:
‘(1) The relations of the two Houses in regard to finance.
(2) Provision of some machinery to deal with persistent disagreement between the two Houses, whether by limitation of veto, joint sitting, referendum or otherwise.
(3) The possibility of coming to some agreement as to such changes in the composition and numbers of the Second House as would ensure that it would act, and would be regarded as acting, fairly between the great parties in the State.’a
This outline was not published.
The first meeting took place in the Prime Minister’s room in the House of Commons on June 17, and there were twelve meetings between then and the end of July. As a result of them the Prime Minister was able to report to the House of Commons before its adjournment for the summer recess ‘that our discussions have made such progress, although we have not so far reached an agreement, as to render it, in the opinion of all of us, not only desirable but necessary that they should continue’. He added that there ‘is no question of their indefinite continuance, and (that) if we find as a result of our further deliberations during the recess that there is no prospect of an agreement that can be announced to Parliament in the course of the present Session, we shall bring the Conference to a close’.b
The question of where the summer meetings should take place then arose. Crewe offered his country house as a venue, but Lansdowne was hostile to this suggestion. Any agreement which might be reached would be subjected to criticism by extremists on both sides. ‘Would not that criticism be more severe,’ he wrote, ‘if it can be said that we had been “softened” by the excellence of Crewe’s champagne and the other attractions of a hospitable and luxurious country house.’c The suggestion was dropped, and Lord Lansdowne’s followers could feel that their leader was maintaining his principles intact amidst the austerities of Bowood, Lansdowne House, Derreen, Meikleour or Tulliallan. But this involved no further meetings until Ministers and Opposition leaders returned to London in October. There was a brief but intensive series of meetings until the middle of the month, a fortnight’s adjournment, and then another series of meetings until the end came on November 10.
Even then no public statement was issued. There were, not unnaturally, a number of reports in the press even while the conference was in progress purporting to describe what was going on, and subsequently more detailed but still unverifiable accounts were published by journalists. Now the memoirs or biographies of all the participants and of some others who were closely concerned are available. Even so the task of unravelling the course of the negotiations does not become a straightforward one, for there are many statements which lack corroboration, and a few cases of direct contradiction between the interpreters of one participant and those of another. But the main lines sta
nd out fairly clearly.
A Unionist memorandum, presented at the beginning of the conference, proposed that legislation should be divided into three categories: financial, ordinary, and constitutional. So far as the first category was concerned it was suggested that the Lords should abandon their claim to reject money bills, provided that tacking could be prevented. Tacking was defined in the memorandum as occurring in the case of bills which, ‘although technically dealing with little or nothing but finance, have social or political consequences which go far beyond the mere raising of revenue’.d On this point substantial agreement was reached. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was responsible for a proposal that a joint committee of both Houses—seven representatives from each with the Speaker presiding and exercising a casting vote—should determine whether or not a measure was a money bill. Austen Chamberlain’s biographer, apparently quoting from an unspecified document, adds the gloss that this committee was to work within the very restrictive rule that ‘if it appears that any provision of a bill, although dealing with taxation, would effect important social or political changes through expropriation or differentiation against any class of owners of property these provisions shall not be treated for the purposes of this act as provisions dealing with taxation’.e
Whether this was accepted by the Government representatives is not certain. On the one hand, Asquith, in a letter to Balfour, most uncharacteristically undated but presumably written towards the end of the conference, referred to the concessions he and his colleagues had made in regard to finance as ‘of the most substantial character, and extremely difficult for us to defend against the criticism of our own supporters’.f On the other, Lansdowne, in a memorandum dated September 10 (such agreement as was reached on finance is commonly thought to have been arrived at in the summer sittings) and also addressed to Balfour, notes that: ‘No one has yet been able to suggest a formula which, to my mind, would be really satisfactory for the purpose of dividing pure finance from legislation partly financial but important quite as much from its political as from its financial effects’.g If Ministers did go as far as Sir Charles Petrie suggests and the conference had succeeded, hardly a single Budget since presented would have been statutorily protected from the interference of the peers.
So far as ‘ordinary’ legislation was concerned, progress was made by accepting a suggestion that when a bill which fell within this category had been twice rejected by the House of Lords, its fate should be determined by a joint sitting of the two Houses. What was to be the composition of such a joint session? Mr. R. C. K. Elisor states that it was agreed ‘that the representation of the Lords … should be so scaled down that a Liberal Government with a Commons majority of fifty would be able to pass its bills’.h But all the other evidence is that this was never accepted by the Unionist representatives. The form in which it was put forward by the Government was that the whole of the House of Commons (670 members) should take part in the joint sitting, together with a hundred representatives—chosen on a basis of proportional representation—of the House of Lords.1 Lansdowne wrote at some length on the point, but never got nearer to a solution than to suggest that a reformed House of Lords (the plenum of which could be admitted) was the key to the problem of joint sittings. And agreement on a scheme for reform was never near. Asquith, in a memorandum dated May 28, had committed himself to reform, and according to Lansdowne, had subsequently ‘admitted casually that the hereditary element must not disappear, and that any House of Lords must of necessity be conservative in its general complexion’.i But the Government representatives, again in Lansdowne’s view, had thereafter ‘shown an ill-concealed desire to “shunt” this part of the case’. This, Lansdowne thought, was because they were hopelessly divided as to how reform should be effected. Largely for this reason he decided to concentrate upon the point. It was where his opponents were weakest. In urging this he committed himself to the following magnificently bland statement. ‘We must, in the first place,’ he wrote, ‘remember that we are ourselves convinced House of Lords reformers, and that the House of Lords itself took up the question long before the conference was dreamed of.’2 But it is nevertheless clear that his main reason for stressing reform at the conference was tactical; and a subject approached in this spirit from the Unionist side, and bristling with inherent difficulties for both sides, was not likely to be one on which progress could be made. Yet without progress here common ground on the composition of joint sittings was almost impossible to find. We must therefore agree, not with Mr. Ensor, but with Asquith’s biographers when they wrote that ‘no agreement could be reached … in what numbers respectively the two Houses should be represented at the joint sittings’.j
The problem of constitutional or ‘organic’ legislation raised still greater difficulties. The Unionists wanted bills which fell within this category and which had twice been rejected by the House of Lords to be submitted to a referendum. Trouble here arose both over the definition of ‘organic’ bills and over the inherent dislike of the Liberal representatives, and particularly of the Prime Minister, for such an innovation as a plebiscite. Sir Harold Nicolson has commented that ‘the very word “referendum” would cause his (Asquith’s) usually tolerant features to writhe into an expression of contemptuous disgust’1jjj There is, indeed, no indication that the Government side was ever prepared to introduce this innovation. What they were prepared to do was entirely to exempt bills on certain subjects, which should be listed individually rather than left to arise out of the definition of a category, from the operation of the Parliament Act. The House of Lords would retain all its existing powers over such measures. Suggested for inclusion in the list were matters relating to the Crown or the Protestant Succession, or a bill to amend the Parliament Act itself.
Such a list did not satisfy the Unionists (although Lansdowne, at least, believed that it was necessary to proceed by an extension of this method rather than by the general definition of ‘organic’ changes). They did not suspect the Government of wishing to abolish the Crown, or to change the Protestant Succession, or even, once its passage was secured, to amend the Parliament Bill. What they were interested in was Home Rule. This was a practical issue, and their dominant interest at the conference was to prevent the easing of its passage.
The Government was prepared to make some concession on this point. The Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed that, in the case of the next Home Rule Bill and of that one only, a first rejection by the Lords should be followed by an immediate general election. If the Government won, the bill would be proceeded with as ordinary legislation. If it lost, resignation would of course follow, but the next Liberal Government would not be prevented from proceeding with Home Rule under the ordinary provisions of the Parliament Act. This was not enough for the Unionists. Balfour was able to argue with some trenchance that ‘we could not make ourselves responsible for a scheme which seemed to imply that, since the people had on three separate occasions expressed their hostility to Home Rule, it was high time to withdraw the subject from their cognizance and to hand it over to the unfettered discretion of the House of Commons and the joint sitting’.k ‘High time’ may have been an exaggerated phrase for a contingency which was most unlikely to arise within seven or eight years, but the compromise Liberal suggestion did lay the Government open, as tends to be the way with compromise suggestions, to a charge of some illogicality. Balfour suggested that, had the Government been willing to subject Home Rule to permanent special treatment, agreement might have been possible.
It was clear, however, that the Liberal representatives could go no further without estranging their supporters. Indeed, as early as October 14, Asquith had written to the King in the following terms:
‘Mr. Asquith regrets to say that the prospect of agreement is not so favourable as it appeared to be at the beginning of the week.… The point of divergence which has been reached is the question whether organic and constitutional changes (such e.g. as Home Rule, the franchise, redistribution) should be exe
mpted from the procedure of joint sessions …; and should … be submitted to a popular referendum ad hoc.
‘The representatives of the Opposition insist on this distinction; the representatives of the Government are opposed to it, not only on its merits, but because they know it would be quite impossible to induce the Liberal Party to agree to it.l
After this letter was written the concession on Home Rule which has been mentioned was made. It therefore became doubly impossible further to give way, and when the concession was not accepted there was no alternative but for the conference to recognise its failure and break up. The question arises to how far the two sides were genuinely seeking an agreement and where the blame for failure to reach one must primarily lie. It cannot be adequately dealt with in simple generalisations about Liberals on the one hand and Unionists on the other, but must rather be answered individually for the principal participants.
There can be little doubt that Asquith wanted an agreement. Austen Chamberlain, ‘to the end of his life’, in the words of his biographer, ‘… could never make up his mind whether the Prime Minister really wanted a compromise or was merely playing for time’;m but Austen, despite his political experience and his generous temperament, was capable of singular acts of incomprehension. Balfour, too, believed a story that the Master of Elibank had declared ‘the Government and his Party … so determined not to have an election till after the Coronation that they will keep the conference going till next year’.n But all the direct evidence was the other way. Asquith incurred some substantial unpopularity by commencing the conference.1 He ignored it throughout the course of the negotiations. He himself vigorously abstained from making any controversial public speeches. He advanced substantial and even dangerous concessions. He was continually optimistic. His temperament and the difficulties in which he would otherwise be involved with the King united to make him eager for a settlement. The summing up of his biographers is a fair one. ‘No one had better reasons for desiring a settlement than Asquith,’ they say, ‘but there came a point at which he felt constrained to say that he could not justify to his supporters the concessions which he was asked to make, if the machinery for settlement between the two Houses was not to apply to the questions in which they were most interested.’o