Mr Balfour's Poodle

by Roy Jenkins

  Balfour was also anxious to be reasonable. He always saw the other side’s case with a dangerous ease. He was just as eager as Asquith not to impede the work of the conference by provocative outside speeches.1 He sought to narrow the differences, and on the day of the failure of the conference he inspired the Prime Minister to write of his attitude in the following terms: ‘We all agree that A.J.B. is head and shoulders above his colleagues. I had a rather intimate talk with him before the conference this morning. He is very pessimistic about the future, and evidently sees nothing for himself but chagrin and a possible private life.’p

  Yet, despite his ‘head and shoulders’ superiority, Balfour did not dominate the Unionist side of the conference. It was Lansdowne who filled this role. He was indefatigable in analysing proposals and putting his views upon them on paper, and it is not merely due to the greater thoroughness of his biographer2 that his attitude during the conference is known to us in much greater detail than is that of Balfour.

  Lansdowne’s dominance did not assist agreement. He was throughout both stubborn and pessimistic. As early as the end of July he was writing ‘supposing … that per impossible we were to arrive at an agreement’,q and by September he was still more resolved on failure. Mr. Ensor is almost certainly right in attributing Lansdowne’s negative approach to the fact that ‘his interest in tariff reform remained tepid (while) his views about Ireland remained narrowly obstinate, being those of a Southern Irish landlord who had never forgotten the Land League’.r Many others in the Unionist Party would have been prepared to agree to some form of federal Home Rule in order to clear the decks for tariff reform. Such views were put forward in the Observer by J. L. Garvin,1 in a series of letters to The Times by Austen Chamberlain’s friend F. S. Oliver,2 and by Alfred Lyttelton3 in private correspondence with Balfour. F. E. Smith gave characteristically sweeping expression to them when he wrote, in a letter, ‘Nor does it seem to me logical to submit the tremendous domestic problems of the future to joint session and reserve federal Home Rule—a dead quarrel for which neither the country nor the party cares a damn outside of Ulster and Liverpool.’s Austen Chamberlain, who was the recipient of this letter, did not dissent greatly from its views and was even more at one with those of Garvin and Oliver. He was able to discover that his father had been in favour of federal devolution before Mr. Gladstone’s ‘mischievous and destructive scheme’, and that was good enough for him.

  Lansdowne was uninfluenced. He had been stubbornly obscurantist on Ireland in 1880 when he was a young man, and he remained so in 1910 when he was an old man. He was throughout quite prepared to see the conference fail rather than agree to a solution which would make easier any form of Home Rule. Cawdor supported him, and Austen Chamberlain, while markedly more moderate on a number of points, was not at his strongest on a complicated constitutional issue and put up little resistance. Indeed, when the end was near and the King was appealing for forbearance on both sides, Austen wrote with some truculence that ‘we cannot sacrifice the constitution in the vain hope of sparing the Throne’.t

  The remaining member of the conference whose views were distinct and of the highest importance was Lloyd George. It might be thought that he, like Austen Chamberlain in this respect if in so few others, would not have dominated on detailed constitutional points. Mrs. Asquith records that when, at the conclusion of the conference, a complicated state paper was drawn up by the Cabinet and presented to the King, she asked her husband which of his colleagues had contributed most. After being assured that ‘all Winston’s suggestions had been discounted’, she asked ‘What aboutv X–––?’ (and the identity of ‘X’ in Mrs. Asquith’s memoirs is never in doubt), and was answered that ‘it was not his “genre” as he was useless upon paper’.u But all the sources of information of what passed at the conference itself go to show that Lloyd George played a vital role. He was in the centre of the stage and so full of fertile suggestions that Unionist memoranda for, and recollections of, the conference refer continually to the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s proposals or to Mr. Lloyd George’s objections. But mainly to the former, for there can be no doubt that throughout this period he was desperately anxious to reach a compromise with the Opposition. ‘That the Chancellor of the Exchequer was sincerely desirous of an agreement he (Austen Chamberlain never doubted,’ Sir Charles Petrie wrotev immediately after recording Austen’s more doubtful view of Asquith on this point.

  What Lloyd George wanted, indeed, was not a limited agreement covering the points in dispute at the conference, but a coalition Government, with an agreed programme on all the major issues of the day. He sought this, not by hints and intermediaries, but by a peculiarly straightforward method,1 and perhaps for this reason his proposals, outside a quite small circle, remained a well-kept secret for a number of years.

  On August 17 he addressed from Criccieth a long memorandum. He began by stressing the number of problems awaiting solution, and the urgency of dealing with them which was imposed upon the nation by the rise of foreign competitors. Yet none of these problems could be effectively dealt with ‘without incurring temporary unpopularity’. In an evenly balanced political situation no party could afford this, and so the true interests of the country suffered. Furthermore, there was a tendency for the extremist tail of each party to wag the dog of the moderate elements: ‘As a rule the advanced sections of a party, being propagandist, are the most active, the best organised, the most resolute, and therefore the most irresistible.’ Joint action would make it unnecessary to pay ‘too much attention to the formulae and projects of rival faddists’. An additional argument was provided by Lloyd George’s belief that neither party commanded the services of more than ‘half a dozen first-rate men’. Other posts had to be filled with politicians of very limited ability. Coalition would obviously help to repair this deficiency.

  What were the urgent questions which would justify the calling into existence of this ‘Ministry of All the Talents’, and what were the lines upon which it was to deal with them? The Chancellor of the Exchequer was fairly specific in his delineation of the issues, but less so in his proposals. He listed twelve points. First came matters of social reform. Housing was to be improved, some method of curbing excessive drinking was to be devised, the Poor Law was to be overhauled and recast, and a system of insurance, directed more against the ‘accidents of life’ than against the foreseeable difficulty of old age, was to be developed. Under only one heading within this group of subjects did Lloyd George go beyond the expression of aspirations. This heading was ‘unemployment’, but the subject dealt with was not its prevention (which the Chancellor apparently regarded as impossible) but the mitigation of its effects by state insurance. This, however, would have to be done in the teeth of opposition from the industrial offices, and, more importantly, from their multitudinous army of agents and collectors. These agents could not be bought out, because the money involved in paying compensation would ‘crush the scheme and destroy its usefulness’. They could not be incorporated in the new arrangement, because this would make impossible a great lowering of the costs of collection. Yet ‘they visit every house, they are indefatigable, they are often very intelligent, and a Government which attempted to take over their work without first of all securing the co-operation of the other party would inevitably fail in its undertaking’. The insurance agents had apparently driven large nails into the coffin of the party system.

  Then came a series of headings dealing with wider subjects. ‘National Reorganisation’ demanded the settlement of the denominational issue in education policy on a non-party basis, and a great extension of technical instruction. ‘National Defence’ involved the closer scrutiny of service spending in some directions and the deliberate encouragement of greater outlay in others. A system of compulsory selective service, following the Swiss model, should be sympathetically investigated. Local government reform was necessary, and ‘the various problems connected with state assistance to trade and commerce could be enquired in
to with some approach to intelligent and judicial impartiality.…’ It was hinted that tariff reform and transport reorganisation (possibly involving the nationalisation of the railways) were suitable subjects for investigation in this way. The land should be more efficiently farmed and this involved both parties turning their backs on the dangerously short-sighted policy of encouraging smallholdings. Big farms, adequate capital, and intelligent management were more sensible if less immediately popular items for an agricultural programme. “Imperial Problems’ was an interesting section only because it included the problem of Ireland—the other points here were trite. ‘In this connection the settlement of the Irish question would come up for consideration,’ Lloyd George cautiously began. ‘The advantages of a non-party treatment of this vexed problem are obvious. Parties might deal with it without being subject to the embarrassing dictation of extreme partisans, whether from (sic) Nationalists or Orangemen.’

  On foreign policy, his last point, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was rotund rather than penetrating. ‘Such a Government,’ he wrote, ‘representing as it would, not a fragment but the whole nation, would undoubtedly enhance the prestige of this country abroad.’ That was the end of the memorandum.

  There is some conflict of evidence as to what Lloyd George did with it. F. E. Smith’s biographer says that Mr. Churchill and Smith were used as intermediaries by the Chancellor, and that Balfour first heard of the proposals from Smith, and Asquith from Mr. Churchill. w The Times, in its obituary of Balfour, published on March 20, 1930, makes no mention of communication through Mr. Churchill or Smith, but speaks of an ‘intrigue’ and of ‘Mr. Asquith being excluded’. This is explicitly denied by Asquith’s biographers. ‘It may be stated with confidence,’ they write, ‘that Asquith believed himself to be fully informed of all that was going on, and he was certainly aware that Mr. Lloyd George was conferring with Mr. Balfour’.x They do not, however, confirm Sir Harold Nicolson’s belief that the memorandum was shown to Balfour by Asquith himself, after he had received it from Lloyd George and discussed it with five more of his Cabinet colleagues.y This view cannot be reconciled with Sir Charles Petrie’s statementz that Balfour did not at first realise that the Prime Minister was privy to the proceedings, but it is probably nearer to the truth than the others which have been mentioned. The consensus of opinion is that no approach was made to Balfour without the approval of the Prime Minister and the knowledge of Crewe, Grey, Haldane, and Mr. Churchill. Smith and Mr. Churchill were certainly eager skirmishers for coalition, but the second Lord Birkenhead is too flattering in the roles which he ascribes to them.

  When the proposal reached Balfour, by whatever method it had come, he thought it worthy of the closest consideration. In Lloyd George’s own words, he ‘was by no means hostile; in fact he went a long way towards indicating that personally he regarded the proposal with a considerable measure of approval. He was not, however, certain of the reception which would be accorded to it by his party.’aa This he endeavoured to ascertain by consulting some of his colleagues. The other Unionist members of the Constitutional Conference were brought in, and so, amongst others, were Bonar Law, Akers-Douglas, and Gerald Balfour.1 F. E. Smith, although informed by Lloyd George, was not directly consulted by the leader of his party.

  All this took time—the negotiations were still in progress at the end of October—and during this period some of the proposals were given a sharper edge. Attention strayed from the more original and constructive parts of Lloyd George’s plan and became concentrated upon a series of straightforward and mutually compensating party bargains. The Unionists were to get a stronger Navy, compulsory military training (which they had never publicly advocated, but which they were not thereby inhibited from regarding as a great prize), and (possibly) tariff reform. In return they were to allow the Liberals to proceed with Home Rule (although under the much less offensive guise of federal devolution), to agree to a compromise solution of the denominational question in education which would probably be nearer to Liberal desires than to their own, and (although there was no mention of this in Lloyd George’s memorandum) to envisage Welsh Church Disestablishment. An agreed solution to the House of Lords question, along the lines discussed within the conference, was necessary as a prerequisite to the wider agreement, of course.

  The provisional horse-trading, so far as the more eager advocates of coalition were concerned at any rate, went further than this. It extended to the allocation of offices. Asquith was to remain Prime Minister, but was to meet the fate which he had tried to thrust upon Campbell-Bannerman in 1905. He was to go to the Lords and leave the leadership in the Commons to Balfour, who would also be Chairman of the Committee of Imperial Defence. Lansdowne was to have the Foreign Office, Mr. Churchill the War Office, and Austen Chamberlain the Admiralty. Lloyd George, although he at one stage offered, inevitably rather rhetorically, to retire if this would ease Unionist difficulties,bb was to remain at the Exchequer. For the rest the offices were to be divided on a strictly equal basis between the two parties.

  All this came to nothing, for Balfour, despite his initially favourable response and the gloomy fears of Unionist foolishness which he expressed both to Asquith and to Lord Eshercc at about this time, eventually killed the plan. Most of the leaders whom he consulted inclined towards acceptance (although it is most difficult to believe that Lansdowne, who remained aloof from this whole negotiation, was not an exception). But Akers-Douglas, Balfour’s former Chief Whip, told him that the views of the rank and file of the party would be quite different. They would not stand for such a wholesale compromise of principle and such a sudden rapprochement with men against whom they had worked up a quite unusual degree of personal bitterness. This appears to have been decisive with Balfour. He was obsessed at the time (in so far as so detached a mind can ever be said to suffer from an obsession) with what he regarded as the bad example of Peel,1 and he was determined not to split his party on the issue. Eighteen years later, discussing with his biographer these negotiations, he stressed the relevance of the Peel precedent.

  ‘My own remark about Peel,’ Mrs. Dugdale records him as saying, ‘that was the point. I should say it now and may well have said it then. Peel twice committed what seems to me the unforgivable sin. He gave away a principle on which he had come into power—and mind you, neither time had an unforeseen factor come into the case. He simply betrayed his party.’dd

  Furthermore, Balfour claimed on this occasion that neither at the time nor in retrospect was he greatly attracted by Lloyd George’s plan on its merits. And his comment on the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s personal attitude was sharp:

  ‘Now isn’t that like Lloyd George. Principles mean nothing to him—never have. His mind doesn’t work that way. It’s both his strength and his weakness. He says to himself at any given moment: “Come on now—we’ve all been squabbling too long, let’s find a reasonable way out of the difficulty”—but such solutions are quite impossible for people who don’t share his outlook on political principles—the great things.’ee

  But there were undoubtedly some of Balfour’s followers whose minds and principles were just as flexible in 1910 as were those of Lloyd George. F. E. Smith was the outstanding example. He put his thoughts with great frankness into two letters to Austen Chamberlain, one of which concluded with the urgent but fortunately unheeded instruction: ‘Please burn this.’

  Smith looked at political groupings with all the unprejudiced realism of a Talleyrand considering possible alliances. And he was convinced that acceptance of the Lloyd George offer would strengthen the right and weaken the left.

  ‘I am absolutely satisfied of L.G.’s honesty and sincerity,’ he wrote. ‘He has been taught much by office and is sick of being wagged by a Little England tail. But if he proved in a year or two difficile or turbulent, where is he and where are we? He is done and has sold the pass. We should still be a united party with the exception of our Orangemen: and they can’t stay out long. What allies can they find?’f
f

  Later, in his second letter, Smith took an even stronger view of the weakness of Lloyd George’s position.

  ‘I am tempted to say of him,’ he rather surprisingly wrote, ’quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat. It seems to me that he is done for ever unless he gradually inclines to our side in all the things that permanently count.’gg

  Smith also saw that a coalition would greatly build up the powers of resistance to economic change and weaken the position of the left outside the Liberal Party as well as within it:

  ‘A great sigh of relief would go up over the whole of business England if a strong and stable Government were formed. … Furthermore such a Government could (1) say to Redmond: thus far and no further, which Asquith standing alone cannot; and (2) absolutely refuse reversal of the Osborne judgment, which Asquith standing alone cannot.’hh

  Here, leaving aside the reference to the Irish question, we catch a foretaste of the spirit of the post-1918 coalition. A strong businessman’s Government, a firm front to labour, and compromise on the traditional ‘political’ disputes was to be the recipe which prevailed then even if it failed in 1910. And the response which Lloyd George’s proposals evoked from different politicians in 1910 presaged to a remarkable degree the attitude which they were to take up in 1921 and 1922. The enthusiasm of Lloyd George himself and of F. E. Smith was, as we have seen, undoubted. Mr. Churchill was equally eager. It was a scheme after his own heart.