by Roy Jenkins
At Buckingham Palace the mood was very different.
‘At 11.0.’ the King wrote in his diary, ‘Bigge returned from the House of Lords with the good news that the Parliament Bill had passed with a majority of 17. So the Halsburyites were thank God beaten! It is indeed a great relief to me—I am spared any further humiliation by a creation of peers.… Bigge and Francis have indeed worked hard for this result.’t
Next day he left to stay at Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire. While there he wrote of being saved ‘from a humiliation which I should never have survived’, and received a comforting letter from Lord Esher which spoke of ‘the wisdom of Your Majesty’s action in not swerving by an inch from the role of a Constitutional Sovereign’, and added, ‘Queen Victoria could not have done better, and would, I believe, not have done otherwise’.u
Elsewhere there were few repetitions of either the fury of the die-hards or the extreme relief of the King. The general public remained as unexcited as it had been throughout the long struggle. The Balfourites were dispirited, and the Government, already occupied with Agadir, had no time for self-congratulation before it was plunged into the turmoil of a national railway strike. The sequence of events was a reminder that as the Liberals won their last great victory, purely political questions were becoming increasingly submerged in broader social and economic problems, and August, 1914, was casting its shadow ahead.
XIV Epilogue
It is tempting to say that, with the Parliament Bill upon the statute book, everything went on much the same as before. But this would not be quite true. The more sweeping constitutional consequences which had been predicted did not, of course, occur. King Edward’s view that the bill would mean the ‘destruction of the House of Lords’ proved quite unfounded. There was a certain falling off in attendance at debates, but the regularity of their appearances at Westminster had never been the most characteristic attribute of their lordships; and in other respects the Upper House continued to discharge much the same functions in much the same way as hitherto. Nor was there any decline in respect for the Lords as expressed through the willingness of outside persons, whether of great or of more limited distinction, to accept peerages. Indeed, in the decades since the Parliament Bill, it has become more than ever appropriate to apply to the House of Lords the words of the old hymn:
‘There is room for new creations
In that upper place of bliss.’
Upon the development of the political parties the effect was substantial, although not in the most obvious directions. There was no great unleashing of Liberal power. The radical tide, discouraged by the National Insurance Bill, ebbed heavily in the country. The leaders of the Government were sated by office and lost their taste for its opportunities. They continued with their highly controversial measures, for they could hardly escape from the groove in which their course was set, but they did so without confidence and without hope. And the House of Lords, making full use of the powers remaining to it, ensured that such of these controversial measures as did not founder upon the Government’s own incompetence were delayed until they could be submerged in the national unity of 1914. As a result, the Parliament Bill, designed as a prelude, has been left as the last monument of triumphant Liberalism. The concentration of radical purpose which its achievement demanded left the Government and their supporters exhausted but unable to rest. In retrospect, 1911 shines out as the last year of Liberal achievement. Thereafter the seeds of disunity and decay found fertile soil in which to settle.
Upon the Unionist Party the effect of the constitutional dispute was more dramatic. It was to change the leadership and to usher in a new era of violent speech and extra-constitutional action. While Balfour brooded on his wrongs at Bad Gastein during August and September, a permanent Halsbury Club was established and Leo Maxse1 coined and published the slogan which became abbreviated into three minatory initials ‘B.M.G.’ Had Balfour wished to ride out the storm he could no doubt have done so—at the price of personal discomfiture and loss of dignity a party leader is almost irremovable—but he chose otherwise. Recognising the revolt of the ‘ditchers’ for what it was, an expression of discontent with his leadership, he resigned, without warning but not without premeditation, on November 8. Lansdowne, more guilty but less sensitive, retained his position in the Lords.
Austen Chamberlain and Walter Long were the principal claimants to Balfour’s position. But neither of them could command the general support of the party, although it seems likely that Long, despite Balfour’s preference for Austen, would have obtained the majority in a straight contest. In the event, however, they both withdrew in favour of a third candidate, the Canadian-born Glasgow ironmaster, Bonar Law, who was then elected unanimously. He had held no office more important than that of Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, and he had become a Privy Councillor only five months previously. He was a compromise candidate, but not a moderate one. Although not associated with the ‘ditcher’ revolt, he was as complete a reaction against Balfour as it is possible to imagine. Where Balfour was detached, equivocal, and complex, Law was committed, partisan, and simple. Where Balfour was intellectually preeminent and personally magnetic, Law was pedestrian and unattractive. Where Balfour could always see a large part of his opponent’s case, Law could see only the more salient features of his own. As a result, where Balfour hesitated, Law struck, and that was precisely what the Unionist Party of the day wanted. After six years of Opposition and three electoral defeats, they were too bitter and frustrated for Balfourian urbanity, the essential basis of which was a calm and confident expectation of power. With Bonar Law at their head they were no longer troubled with behaviour which was a relic from easier times. In the words of Asquith’s biographers, ‘he (Law) took an early opportunity of announcing that the era of compliments between politicians was ended’.a And with its end, the Unionist Party, enraged rather than discouraged by their defeat over the Parliament Bill, began to move ever faster towards extreme courses and threats of violence.
Since the Parliament Act has been in operation its Clause Two procedure, by which bills may be passed over the veto of the Lords after a delay of two years, has been fully used on three occasions. Its Clause One procedure, by which a money bill may so pass after a delay of a month, has never been used; and, indeed, the practical value of the Clause is not great, for the definition of a money bill, for the purpose of the Parliament Act, is clear but restrictive. Lord Ullswater, who as Mr. Speaker Lowther had first to apply the definition, said that he never had any difficulty in deciding whether to grant or withhold his certificate and that, ironically enough, the Finance Bill of 1909, which was the origin of Clause One, would have been refused its protection.b He and his successors took a similar view of many subsequent Finance Bills, so much so that between 1913 and the end of 1937 only twelve out of twenty-nine were considered to be money bills.c The others were held by the Speaker of the day to go beyond the ‘imposition, repeal, remission, alteration or regulation of taxation’. Bills other than Finance Bills have secured certificates, but they have almost uniformly been measures of minor importance. Between the end of 1937 and the end of 1952 a rather higher proportion of Finance Bills have been afforded the protection of Clause One. Twelve have been certified; seven have gone up to the House of Lords without the Speaker’s certificate.1
The fact that there has been no repetition of the peers’ 1909 behaviour therefore owes more to a change of political climate than to the legal provisions of the Parliament Act. Even when the weak Labour Government of 1929 was in office, the House of Lords accepted the uncertified Finance Bill of 1930 quite as automatically, without a committee stage, as the certified Finance Bill of 1931. Bills dealing with finance have achieved immunity not so much because their lordships’ power over some of them have been statutably limited to a delay of one month as because of a general recognition that the peers burned their fingers in interfering with the Budget of 1909.
Two of the three bills which have passed under the
Clause Two procedure—the Established Church (Wales) Bill and the Government of Ireland Bill—were introduced by the Asquith Government in the session following that in which the Parliament Act had itself become law. In this same session a Temperance (Scotland) Bill was also introduced, and was so heavily amended by the Lords that the Government preferred to wait until it could be secured under the Parliament Act rather than accept these changes. When it was presented to the Lords for the second time, however, a compromise, reasonably favourable to the Government, was accepted by the Upper House; and the bill became law without the application of the Parliament Bill procedure. A Plural Voting Bill was introduced in 1913 and was rejected by the Lords both in that session and in the following one. The outbreak of war then prevented its being sent up for the third time, and there was therefore no formal invocation of the Parliament Act in this case.
The third bill actually to pass under the Parliament Act procedure was another Parliament Bill, restricting the period of suspensory veto to one year. It was introduced by the Attlee Government in 1947. The Iron and Steel Bill introduced in the session of 1948-49 was also considered a likely candidate for the application of Clause Two procedure—indeed one of the principal reasons for the amending Parliament Bill was to enable the Iron and Steel Bill to pass more quickly over the veto of the Upper House—but in the event a compromise was reached by which the Lords passed the steel measure subject to its operation being delayed until after the general election of 1950. As no earlier date of operation could be secured by use of the suspensory veto procedure there was no difficulty for the Government in the acceptance of this arrangement.
Only on the last of the three occasions on which the Parliament Bill was put to work did the procedure function smoothly. In the case of Welsh Church Disestablishment, the measure, first introduced on April 12, 1912, plodded a long course of three successive journeys through both Houses, consuming a vast amount of parliamentary time before becoming law after the statutory delay in the summer of 1914. But the statutory delay had consumed the whole of the time available for an important and bitterly contested change. The European War was then upon the country and the religious status quo in Wales was thought to be so obviously part of the price for national unity that it was unnecessary for the Unionists even to submit a formal demand for payment. The Nonconformists of the Principality, who had asserted their strength and shown their dissatisfaction with the Anglican Establishment in the clearest possible way at successive general elections had to wait until 1920 before a change could be effected. A statutory delay of two years and one month imposed upon a measure which in the opinion of those most intimately concerned was already long overdue extended itself, by using the limited time available for radical change (if the war had not broken out, a general election within the next few months might well have produced much the same result), into an effective delay of almost eight years.
The Home Rule Bill showed up the disadvantages (and dangers) of delay still more clearly. This measure, first introduced a day before the Welsh Church Bill, fell only a little behind it in the course of the three-circuit race. But during this period the questions raised by Home Rule dominated the whole of the political scene, dug a large dent in the 250-year old British tradition of the softening of conflicts, and provided striking support for the view that there are times when almost any swift settlement of an issue is better than a prolongation of controversy. Between April, 1912, and July, 1914, while the House of Lords used to the full its right of delay, a whole series of unprecedented political and constitutional dangers arose. Large-scale private armies were raised and trained, first in the North and later in the South of Ireland. A ‘covenant’, pledging resistance to an Act of Parliament and threatening the proclamation of an illegal provisional government in a part of the United Kingdom, was signed by more than half a million men and women, headed by a Privy Councillor and former Law Officer of the Crown. The leader of the Opposition, speaking of this threatened revolt, declared that he could imagine ‘no length of resistance to which Ulster will go which I shall not be ready to support.…’ The King was urged to veto the bill when it came up for his assent and to dismiss his Ministers, replacing them by a ‘caretaker’ Government headed by either Rosebery or Balfour which would hold office during the course of a general election; and he was near to accepting both these pieces of advice. Prominent military servants of the Government, notably Sir Henry Wilson,1 the Director of Military Operations, engaged in a constant intrigue with the Opposition and with the potential insurgents; largely as a result of misunderstanding, a large number of army officers, stationed at the Curragh, were organised into offering their resignations; and Asquith had himself to take over the War Office in an attempt to retrieve the situation.2
In all these ways the constitution showed signs of great strain. Nor did the detailed working of the Parliament Act procedure make it easier to remove any of the causes of friction during the period of delay. It became clear at least as early as the summer of 1913 that some arrangement for the special treatment of Ulster, or of a part of the province, was inevitable. How was this provision to be made? If it was brought forward as an amendment during the bill’s third passage through the Commons it could deprive the bill of the protection of the Parliament Act and cause the Government to start the wearisome process again at the beginning. The alternative was to incorporate the change in a parallel but independent amending bill. This was attempted, and in the third session the Lords were presented with a Government of Ireland (Amendment) Bill before the main measure. But substantial though the concession contained in this amending bill was (six years’ exclusion for those districts which, in a plebiscite, expressed a wish for special treatment), the Lords could not resist the temptation further to amend until they had made the compromise measure quite unacceptable to the Government. A Buckingham Palace Conference failed to resolve the deadlock which was thereby created and only the outbreak of war and the suspension of the main bill saved the day. Otherwise the Government would have been faced with the unattractive alternatives of further holding up the main bill until they got their own amending bill under the Parliament Act or of putting into operation a highly controversial measure from some of the features of which they had publicly announced their desire to retreat.
In effect the delaying powers left to the House of Lords under the Parliament Act proved to be still more substantial in the case of the Home Rule Bill than in that of the Welsh Church Disestablishment Bill. Not merely an interval of five times the statutory period, but the Easter Rebellion of 1916, the destruction of the Irish Parliamentary Party, the outbreak of one civil war and the sowing of the seeds of another intervened before different men negotiated a different settlement in 1922. The evil of haste was given a wide berth.
After these excitements, the third measure to pass under the Parliament Act—the amending Parliament Bill of 1947—had a very quiet passage into law. But it was a much tamed House of Lords which had to deal with it. After 1945 the peers enjoyed the same nominal powers as in the years immediately before 1914, but they did not enjoy the same confidence in their own position in the state. The second Parliament Bill did rather less than keep pace with the change of spirit which had already occurred. It first passed through the House of Commons in the autumn of 1947 and came up for second reading in the Lords at the end of January, 1948. The debate was adjourned in order that the Government might consider an Opposition suggestion for a Constitutional Conference and an attempt at an agreed solution. A few days later the Government announced its willingness to enter into such talks, and the conference was accordingly set up. It was slightly shorter-lived than the conference of 1910, but equally fruitless in its results. A measure of ill-defined agreement was reached on the future composition of the Upper House, but the conflict on powers was not resolved. The Government amended its demand for a maximum delay of twelve months from the date of a bill’s first second reading in the Commons to one of nine months from the date of its first third
reading, if that should prove to be a longer period. This concession was designed to cover a situation in which a bill had a slow passage through the Lower House. The Opposition, for its part, was prepared to advance as far as twelve months’ delay from the first third reading. The difference of three months proved insuperable. It was not as slight as may appear to be the case, for the Government’s proposals would have ensured the legislative utility of the fourth session of a radical Parliament, while the Opposition’s offer would have confined this inviolability to the first three sessions. Furthermore, as in 1910, this difference of principle shrouded an intense concern, on both sides, with a particular measure. The nationalisation of the iron and steel industry was as effective a bar to the agreement of Mr. Attlce and Mr. Churchill in 1948 as Home Rule had been to the agreement of Asquith and Balfour thirty-eight years earlier.
Foundering on this rock, the 1948 conference abandoned its work at the end of April. In June the interrupted second reading debate was resumed in the House of Lords, and the bill was rejected by 177 votes to 81. The Government was then confronted with the problem that, if it allowed parliamentary sessions to begin and end at the normal time, the bill would not become law under the processes of the first Parliament Act until a date dangerously near to the statutory end of the Parliament. Its choice of electioneering dates would be seriously impaired. A brief special session was accordingly summoned for September, 1948, during which the bill completed the second of its three rounds. On this occasion it was rejected by the peers by a vote of 204 to 34. The normal 1948-49 session was then extended until December, 1949, and the bill was able to complete its third lap in a leisurely way. It came before the Lords for the last time on November 29, was rejected by no votes to 37, and received the Royal Assent on December 16, the last day of the session and the last sitting day of the Parliament of 1945. This second Parliament Act has not yet been called into operation.