Draft:H.H. Asquith as Chancellor and peacetime Prime Minister

The Right Honourable The Earl of Oxford and Asquith KG PC KC FRS
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
In office 5 April 1908 – 5 December 1916
Monarchs	Edward VII George V
Preceded by	Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
Succeeded by	David Lloyd George
Chancellor of the Exchequer
In office 10 December 1905 – 12 April 1908
Prime Minister	Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
Preceded by	Austen Chamberlain
Succeeded by	David Lloyd George
Home Secretary
In office 18 August 1892 – 25 June 1895
Prime Minister	William Ewart Gladstone The Earl of Rosebery
Preceded by	Henry Matthews
Succeeded by	Matthew White Ridley
Secretary of State for War
In office 30 March 1914 – 5 August 1914
Preceded by	J. E. B. Seely
Succeeded by	The Earl Kitchener
Leader of the Opposition
In office 12 February 1920 – 21 November 1922
Monarch	George V
Prime Minister	David Lloyd George Bonar Law
Preceded by	Donald Maclean
Succeeded by	Ramsay MacDonald
In office 6 December 1916 – 14 December 1918
Monarch	George V
Prime Minister	David Lloyd George
Preceded by	Sir Edward Carson
Succeeded by	Donald Maclean
Leader of the Liberal Party
In office 30 April 1908 – 14 October 1926
Preceded by	Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
Succeeded by	David Lloyd George
Personal details
Born	Herbert Asquith (1852-09-12)12 September 1852 Morley, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
Died	15 February 1928(1928-02-15) (aged 75) Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire, England
Resting place	All Saints' Church, Sutton Courtenay
Political party	Liberal
Spouses	Helen Melland ​ ​ (m. 1877;  1891)​ Margot Tennant ​ ​ (m. 1894;  1928)​
Children	10, including Raymond, Herbert, Arthur, Violet, Cyril, Elizabeth, Anthony
Education	Balliol College, Oxford Inns of Court School of Law
Profession	Barrister

Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, KG, PC, KC, FRS (12 September 1852 – 15 February 1928), generally known as H. H. Asquith, served as the Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 till 1916, the last to lead that party in government without a coalition. Asquith took the United Kingdom into the First World War, but resigned amid political conflict in December 1916 and was succeeded by his War Secretary David Lloyd George.

When the Liberals regained power under Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in 1905, Asquith was named as Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1908, when the dying Campbell-Bannerman resigned, Asquith succeeded him as prime minister, with Lloyd George as chancellor.

With their first majority government since the 1880s, the Liberals were determined to advance their agenda. An impediment to this was the unelected House of Lords, dominated by the Conservatives. When Lloyd George proposed, and the House of Commons passed, the People's Budget of 1909, the Lords rejected it. Meanwhile, the South Africa Act 1909 passed. Asquith called an election for January 1910, and the Liberals won, though only with a minority government. Although the Lords then passed the budget, Asquith was determined to reform the upper house, and after another general election in December 1910 gained passage of the Parliament Act 1911, allowing a bill three times passed by the Commons in consecutive sessions to be enacted regardless of the Lords. Asquith was less successful in dealing with Irish Home Rule. Repeated crises led to gun running and violence, a pattern that continued past the start of the First World War in 1914.

Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1905–1908

Asquith as Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the House of Commons

Salisbury's Conservative successor as Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, resigned in December 1905 but did not seek a dissolution of Parliament and a general election. King Edward VII invited Campbell-Bannerman to form a minority government. Asquith and his close political allies Haldane and Sir Edward Grey tried to pressure him into taking a peerage to become a figurehead Prime Minister in the House of Lords, giving the pro-empire wing of the party greater dominance in the House of Commons. Campbell-Bannerman called their bluff and refused to move. Asquith was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. He held the post for over two years and introduced three budgets.

A month after taking office, Campbell-Bannerman called a general election, in which the Liberals gained a landslide majority of 132. However, Asquith's first budget, in 1906, was constrained by the annual income and expenditure plans he had inherited from his predecessor Austen Chamberlain. The only income for which Chamberlain had over-budgeted was the duty from sales of alcohol. With a balanced budget, and a realistic assessment of future public expenditure, Asquith was able, in his second and third budgets, to lay the foundations for limited redistribution of wealth and welfare provisions for the poor. Blocked at first by Treasury officials from setting a variable rate of income tax with higher rates on those with high incomes, he set up a committee under Sir Charles Dilke which recommended not only variable income tax rates but also a super-tax on incomes of more than £5,000 a year. Asquith also introduced a distinction between earned and unearned income, taxing the latter at a higher rate. He used the increased revenues to fund old-age pensions, the first time a British government had provided them. Reductions in selective taxes, such as that on sugar, were aimed at benefiting the poor.

Asquith planned the 1908 budget, but by the time he presented it to the Commons, he was no longer Chancellor. Campbell-Bannerman's health had been failing for nearly a year. After a series of heart attacks, he resigned on 3 April 1908, less than three weeks before he died. Asquith was universally accepted as the natural successor. King Edward, who was on holiday in Biarritz, sent for Asquith, who took the boat train to France and kissed hands as prime minister in the Hôtel du Palais, Biarritz on 7 April.

Peacetime prime minister: 1908–1914

Appointments and cabinet

Asquith in 1908

On Asquith's return from Biarritz, his leadership of the Liberals was affirmed by a party meeting (the first time this had been done for a prime minister). He initiated a cabinet reshuffle. Lloyd George was promoted to be Asquith's replacement as chancellor. Winston Churchill succeeded Lloyd George as President of the Board of Trade, entering the Cabinet despite his youth (aged 33) and the fact that he had crossed the floor to become a Liberal only four years previously.

Asquith demoted or dismissed a number of Campbell-Bannerman's cabinet ministers. Lord Tweedmouth, the First Lord of the Admiralty, was relegated to the nominal post of Lord President of the Council. Lord Elgin was sacked from the Colonial Office and the Earl of Portsmouth (whom Asquith had tutored) was too, as undersecretary at the War Office. The abruptness of their dismissals caused hard feelings; Elgin wrote to Tweedmouth, "I venture to think that even a prime minister may have some regard for the usages common among gentlemen ... I feel that even a housemaid gets a better warning."

Historian Cameron Hazlehurst wrote that "the new men, with the old, made a powerful team". The cabinet choices balanced the competing factions in the party; the appointments of Lloyd George and Churchill satisfied the radicals, while the whiggish element favored McKenna's appointment.

Prime minister at play

Possessed of "a faculty for working quickly," Asquith had considerable time for leisure. Reading the classics, poetry, and a vast range of English literature consumed much of his time. So did correspondence; intensely disliking the telephone, Asquith was a prolific letter writer. Travelling, often to country houses owned by members of Margot's family, was almost constant, Asquith being a devoted "weekender". He spent part of each summer in Scotland, with golf, constituency matters, and time at Balmoral as duty minister. He and Margot divided their time between Downing Street and The Wharf, a country house at Sutton Courtenay in Berkshire which they bought in 1912; their London mansion, 20 Cavendish Square, was let during his premiership. Other recreations included bridge, to which he was addicted, and drink, which, friends and enemies alike, considered sometimes became close to an addiction.

Above all else, Asquith thrived on company and conversation. A clubbable man, he enjoyed "the companionship of clever and attractive women" even more. Throughout his life, Asquith had a circle of close female friends, which Margot termed his "harem". In 1912, one of these, Venetia Stanley became much closer. Meeting first in 1909–1910, by 1912 she was Asquith's constant correspondent and companion. Between that point and 1915, he wrote her some 560 letters, at a rate of up to four a day. Although it remains uncertain whether or not they were lovers, she became of central importance to him. Asquith's thorough enjoyment of "comfort and luxury" during peacetime, and his unwillingness to adjust his behavior during conflict, ultimately contributed to the impression of a man out of touch. Lady Tree's teasing question, asked at the height of the conflict; "Tell me, Mr Asquith, do you take an interest in the war;" conveyed a commonly held view.

Domestic policy

Reforming the House of Lords

1909: People's Budget

Asquith hoped to act as a mediator between members of his cabinet as they pushed Liberal legislation through Parliament. Events, including conflict with the House of Lords, forced him to the front from the start of his premiership. Despite the Liberals' massive majority in the House of Commons, the Tories had overwhelming support in the unelected upper chamber. Campbell-Bannerman had favored reforming the Lords' by providing that a bill thrice passed by the Commons at least six months apart could become law without the Lords' consent while diminishing the power of the Commons by reducing the maximum term of a parliament from seven to five years. Asquith, as chancellor, had served on a cabinet committee that had written a plan to resolve legislative stalemates by a joint sitting of the Commons as a body with 100 of the peers. The Commons passed a number of pieces of legislation in 1908 which were defeated or heavily amended in the Lords, including a Licensing Bill, a Scottish Small Landholders' Bill, and a Scottish Land Values Bill.

None of these bills were important enough to dissolve parliament and seek a new mandate at a general election. Asquith and Lloyd George believed the peers would back down if presented with Liberal objectives contained within a finance bill—the Lords had not obstructed a money bill since the 17th century, and after initially blocking Gladstone's attempt (as chancellor) to repeal Paper Duties, had yielded in 1861 when it was submitted again in a finance bill. Accordingly, the Liberal leadership expected that after many objections from the Tory peers, the Lords would yield to policy changes wrapped within a budget bill.

This 1909 Punch cartoon suggests the Liberals were delighted when the Lords forced an election. Back row: Haldane, Churchill with arms up, being hugged by his ally Lloyd George. Asquith standing at right. Bottom row: McKenna, Lord Crewe (with moustache), Augustine Birrell leaning back

In a major speech in December 1908, Asquith warned that the upcoming budget would reflect the Liberals' policy agenda, and the People's Budget that was submitted to Parliament by Lloyd George the following year greatly expanded social welfare programs. To pay for them, it significantly increased both direct and indirect taxes. These included a 20 percent tax on the unearned increase in value in land, payable at the death of the owner or sale of the land. There would also be a tax of 1⁄2d in the pound on undeveloped land. A graduated income tax was imposed, and there were increases in imposts on tobacco and spirits. A tax on petrol was introduced despite Treasury concerns that it could not work in practice. Although Asquith held fourteen cabinet meetings to assure unity amongst his ministers, there was opposition from some Liberals; Rosebery described the budget as "inquisitorial, tyrannical, and Socialistic".

The budget divided the country and provoked bitter debate through the summer of 1909. The Northcliffe Press (The Times and the Daily Mail) urged rejection of the budget to give tariff reform (indirect taxes on imported goods which, it was felt, would encourage British industry and trade within the Empire) a chance; there were many public meetings, some of them organized by dukes, in protest at the budget. Many Liberal politicians attacked the peers, including Lloyd George in his Limehouse speech, in which he said "a fully-equipped Duke costs as much to keep up as two dreadnoughts (battleships)" and was "less easy to scrap". King Edward privately urged Conservative leaders Balfour and Lord Lansdowne to pass the Budget (this was not unusual, as Queen Victoria had helped to broker agreement between the two Houses over the Irish Church Act 1869 and the Third Reform Act in 1884). From July it became increasingly clear that the Tory peers would reject the budget, partly in the hope of forcing an election. If they rejected it, Asquith determined, he would have to ask King Edward to dissolve Parliament, four years into a seven-year term, as it would mean the legislature had refused supply. The budget passed the Commons on 4 November 1909 but was voted down in the Lords on the 30th, the Lords passing a resolution by Lord Lansdowne stating that they were entitled to oppose the finance bill as it lacked an electoral mandate. Asquith had Parliament prorogued three days later for an election beginning on 15 January 1910, with the Commons first passing a resolution deeming the Lords' vote to be an attack on the constitution.

1910: election and constitutional deadlock

The January 1910 general election was dominated by talk of removing the Lords' veto. A possible solution was to threaten to have the King pack the House of Lords with freshly minted Liberal peers, who would override the Lords's veto; Asquith's talk of safeguards was taken by many to mean that he had secured King Edward's agreement to this. They were mistaken; the King had informed Asquith that he would not consider a mass creation of peers until after a second general election.

Lloyd George and Churchill were the leading forces in the Liberals' appeal to the voters; Asquith, clearly tired, took to the hustings for a total of two weeks during the campaign, and when the polls began, journeyed to Cannes with such speed that he neglected an engagement with an annoyed King Edward. The result was a hung Parliament. The Liberals lost heavily from their great majority of 1906 but still finished with two more seats than the Conservatives. With Irish Nationalist and Labour support, the government would have ample support on most issues, and Asquith stated that his majority compared favorably with those enjoyed by Palmerston and Lord John Russell.

Asquith caricatured in Vanity Fair, 1910

Immediate further pressure to remove the Lords' veto now came from the Irish MPs, who wanted to remove the Lords' ability to block the introduction of Irish Home Rule. They threatened to vote against the Budget unless they had their way. With another general election likely before long, Asquith had to make clear the Liberal policy on constitutional change to the country without alienating the Irish and Labour. This initially proved difficult, and the King's speech opening Parliament was vague on what was to be done to neutralize the Lords' veto. Asquith dispirited his supporters by stating in Parliament that he had neither asked for nor received a commitment from King Edward to create peers. The cabinet considered resigning and leaving it up to Balfour to try to form a Conservative government.

The budget passed the Commons again, and – now that it had an electoral mandate – it was approved by the Lords in April without a division. The cabinet finally decided to back a plan based on Campbell-Bannerman's, that a bill passed by the Commons in three consecutive annual sessions would become a law notwithstanding the Lords' objections. Unless King Edward guaranteed that he would create enough Liberal peers to pass the bill, ministers would resign and allow Balfour to form a government, leaving the matter to be debated at the ensuing general election. On 14 April 1910, the Commons passed resolutions that would become the basis of the eventual Parliament Act 1911: to remove the power of the Lords to veto money bills, to reduce blocking of other bills to a two-year power of delay, and also to reduce the term of a parliament from seven years to five. In that debate Asquith also hinted – in part to ensure the support of the Irish MPs – that he would ask the King to break the deadlock "in that Parliament" (i.e. that he would ask for the mass creation of peers, contrary to King Edward's earlier stipulation that there be a second election).

These plans were scuttled by the death of Edward VII on 6 May 1910. Asquith and his ministers were initially reluctant to press the new king, George V, in mourning for his father, for commitments on constitutional change, and the monarch's views were not yet known. With a strong feeling in the country that the parties should compromise, Asquith and other Liberals met with Conservative leaders in a number of conferences through much of the remainder of 1910. These talks failed in November over Conservative insistence that there be no limits on the Lords' ability to veto Irish Home Rule. When the Parliament Bill was submitted to the Lords, they made amendments that were not acceptable to the government.

1910–1911: second election and Parliament Act

On 11 November, Asquith asked King George to dissolve Parliament for another general election in December, and on the 14th met again with the King and demanded assurances the monarch would create an adequate number of Liberal peers to carry the Parliament Bill. The King was slow to agree, and Asquith and his cabinet informed him they would resign if he did not make the commitment. Balfour had told King Edward that he would form a Conservative government if the Liberals left office but the new King did not know this. The King reluctantly gave in to Asquith's demand, writing in his diary that, "I disliked having to do this very much, but agreed that this was the only alternative to the Cabinet resigning, which at this moment would be disastrous".

Asquith dominated the short election campaign, focusing on the Lords' veto in calm speeches, compared by his biographer Stephen Koss to the "wild irresponsibility" of other major campaigners. In a speech at Hull, he stated that the Liberals' purpose was to remove the obstruction, not establish an ideal upper house, "I have always got to deal—the country has got to deal—with things here and now. We need an instrument [of constitutional change] that can be set to work at once, which will get rid of deadlocks, and give us the fair and even chance in legislation to which we are entitled, and which is all that we demand."

Samuel Begg's depiction of the passing of the Parliament Bill in the House of Lords, 1911

The election resulted in little change to the party strengths (the Liberal and Conservative parties were exactly equal in size; by 1914 the Conservative Party would actually be larger owing to by-election victories). Nevertheless, Asquith remained in Number Ten, with a large majority in the Commons on the issue of the House of Lords. The Parliament Bill again passed the House of Commons in April 1911 and was heavily amended in the Lords. Asquith advised King George that the monarch would be called upon to create the peers, and the King agreed, asking that his pledge be made public and that the Lords be allowed to reconsider their opposition. Once it was, there was a raging internal debate within the Tory party on whether to give in or to continue to vote no even when outnumbered by hundreds of newly created peers. After a lengthy debate, on 10 August 1911, the Lords voted narrowly not to insist on their amendments, with many Tory peers abstaining and a few voting in favor of the government; the bill was passed into law.

According to Jenkins, although Asquith had at times moved slowly during the crisis, "on the whole, Asquith's slow molding of events had amounted to a masterly display of political nerve and patient determination. Compared with [the Conservatives], his leadership was outstanding." Churchill wrote to Asquith after the second 1910 election, "your leadership was the main and conspicuous feature of the whole fight". Matthew, in his article on Asquith, found that, "the episode was the zenith of Asquith's prime ministerial career. In the British Liberal tradition, he patched rather than reformulated the constitution."

Social, religious and labour matters

Despite the distraction of the problem of the House of Lords, Asquith and his government moved ahead with a number of pieces of reforming legislation. According to Matthews, "no peacetime premier has been a more effective enabler. Labor exchanges, the introduction of unemployment and health insurance ... reflected the reforms the government was able to achieve despite the problem of the Lords. Asquith was not himself a 'new Liberal', but he saw the need for a change in assumptions about the individual's relationship to the state, and he was fully aware of the political risk to the Liberals of a Labour Party on its left flank." Keen to keep the support of the Labour Party, the Asquith government passed bills urged by that party, including the Trade Union Act 1913 (reversing the Osborne judgment) and in 1911 granting MPs a salary, making it more feasible for working-class people to serve in the House of Commons.

Asquith had as chancellor placed money aside for the provision of non-contributory old-age pensions; the bill authorizing them passed in 1908, during his premiership, despite some objection in the Lords. Jenkins noted that the scheme (which provided five shillings a week to single pensioners aged seventy and over, and slightly less than twice that to married couples) "to modern ears sounds cautious and meager. But it was violently criticized at the time for showing a reckless generosity."

Asquith's new government became embroiled in a controversy over the Eucharistic Congress of 1908, held in London. Following the Catholic Emancipation Act 1829, the Roman Catholic Church had seen a resurgence in Britain, and a large procession displaying the Blessed Sacrament was planned to allow the laity to participate. Although such an event was forbidden by the 1829 act, planners counted on the British reputation for religious tolerance, and Francis Cardinal Bourne, the Archbishop of Westminster, had obtained permission from the Metropolitan Police. When the plans became widely known, King Edward objected, as did many other Protestants. Asquith received inconsistent advice from his Home Secretary, Herbert Gladstone, and successfully pressed the organizers to cancel the religious aspects of the procession, though it cost him the resignation of his only Catholic cabinet minister, Lord Ripon.

Disestablishment of the Welsh Church was a Liberal priority, but despite support by most Welsh MPs, there was opposition in the Lords. Asquith was an authority on Welsh disestablishment from his time under Gladstone but had little to do with the passage of the bill. It was twice rejected by the Lords, in 1912 and 1913, but having been forced through under the Parliament Act received royal assent in September 1914, with the provisions suspended until war's end.

Votes for women

Early 20th century suffragist lapel pin

Asquith had opposed votes for women as early as 1882, and he remained well known as an adversary throughout his time as prime minister. He took a detached view of the women's suffrage question, believing it should be judged on whether extending the franchise would improve the system of government, rather than as a question of rights. He did not understand—Jenkins ascribed it to a failure of imagination—why passions were raised on both sides over the issue. He told the House of Commons in 1913, while complaining of the "exaggerated language" on both sides, "I am sometimes tempted to think, as one listens to the arguments of supporters of women's suffrage, that there is nothing to be said for it, and I am sometimes tempted to think, as I listen to the arguments of the opponents of women's suffrage, that there is nothing to be said against it."

The Prime Minister became a target for militant suffragists as they abandoned hope of achieving the vote through peaceful means. He was several times the subject of their tactics: confronted (to his annoyance) at evening parties, accosted on the golf course, and ambushed while driving to Stirling to dedicate a memorial to Campbell-Bannerman. On the last occasion, his top hat proved adequate protection against the dog whips wielded by the women. These incidents left him unmoved, as he did not believe them a true manifestation of public opinion.

With a growing majority of the Cabinet, including Lloyd George and Churchill, in favour of women's suffrage, Asquith was pressed to allow consideration of a private member's bill to give women the vote. The majority of Liberal MPs were also in favour. Jenkins deemed him one of the two main prewar obstacles to women gaining the vote, the other being the suffragists's own militancy. In 1912, Asquith reluctantly agreed to permit a free vote on an amendment to a pending reform bill, allowing women the vote on the same terms as men. This would have satisfied Liberal suffrage supporters, and many suffragists, but the Speaker in January 1913 ruled that the amendment changed the nature of the bill, which would have to be withdrawn. Asquith was loud in his complaints against the Speaker, but was privately relieved.

Asquith belatedly came around to support women's suffrage in 1917, by which time he was out of office. Women over the age of thirty were eventually given the vote by Lloyd George's government under the Representation of the People Act 1918. Asquith's reforms to the House of Lords eased the way for the passage of the bill.

Irish Home Rule

Members of the Ulster Volunteer Force march through Belfast, 1914

The question of Irish Home Rule consumed much of Asquith's time during the final two peacetime years. Support for self-government for Ireland had been a tenet of the Liberal Party since 1886, but Asquith had not been as enthusiastic, stating in 1903 (while in opposition) that the party should never take office if that government would be dependent for survival on the support of the Irish Nationalist Party. After 1910, though, Irish Nationalist support helped keep Asquith in office for the remainder of the prewar period. Retaining Ireland in the Union was the declared intent of all parties, and the Nationalists, as part of the majority that kept Asquith in office, were entitled to seek enactment of their plans for Home Rule, and to expect Liberal and Labour support. The Conservatives were strongly opposed to Home Rule; the desire to retain a veto for the Lords on such bills had been an unbridgeable gap between the parties in the constitutional talks prior to the second 1910 election.

The cabinet committee (not including Asquith) that in 1911 planned the Third Home Rule Bill opposed any special status for Protestant Ulster within majority-Catholic Ireland. Asquith later (in 1913) wrote to Churchill, stating that the Prime Minister had always believed and stated that the price of Home Rule should be a special status for Ulster. In spite of this, the bill as introduced in April 1912 contained no such provision, and was meant to apply to all Ireland. Neither partition nor a special status for Ulster was likely to satisfy either side. The self-government offered by the bill was very limited, but Irish Nationalists, expecting Home Rule to come by gradual parliamentary steps, favoured it. The Conservatives and Ulster Unionists opposed it. Both Nationalists and Unionists began preparing to get their way by force if necessary, and the Unionists were in general better financed and more organised.

Since the Parliament Act the Unionists could no longer block Home Rule in the House of Lords, but only delay Royal Assent by two years. Asquith decided to postpone any concessions to the Unionists until the bill's third passage through the Commons, when he believed the Unionists would be desperate for a compromise. Jenkins concluded that had Asquith tried for an earlier agreement, he would have had no luck, as many of his opponents wanted a fight and the opportunity to smash his government. Sir Edward Carson, MP for Dublin University and leader of the Irish Unionists in Parliament, threatened a revolt if Home Rule was enacted. The new Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar Law, campaigned in Parliament and in northern Ireland, warning Ulstermen against "Rome Rule", that is, domination by the island's Catholic majority. Many who opposed Home Rule felt that the Liberals had violated the Constitution – by pushing through major constitutional change without a clear electoral mandate, with the House of Lords, formerly the "watchdog of the constitution", not reformed as had been promised in the preamble of the 1911 Act – and thus justified actions that in other circumstances might be treason.

The passions generated by the Irish question contrasted with Asquith's cool detachment, and he wrote about the prospective partition of the county of Tyrone, which had a mixed population, deeming it "an impasse, with unspeakable consequences, upon a matter which to English eyes seems inconceivably small, & to Irish eyes immeasurably big". As the Commons debated the Home Rule bill in late 1912 and early 1913, the north of Ireland mobilised, with talk of Carson declaring a Provisional Government and Ulster Volunteer Forces (UVF) built around the Orange Lodges, but in the cabinet, only Churchill viewed this with alarm. These forces, insisting on their loyalty to the British Crown but increasingly well-armed with smuggled weapons, prepared to do battle with the British Army, but Unionist leaders were confident that the army would not aid in forcing Home Rule on Ulster. As the Home Rule bill awaited its third passage through the Commons, the so-called Curragh Incident occurred in April 1914. With deployment of troops into Ulster imminent and threatening language by Churchill and the Secretary of State for War, John Seely, around sixty army officers, led by Brigadier-General Hubert Gough, announced that they would rather be dismissed from the service than obey. With unrest spreading to army officers in England, the Cabinet acted to placate the officers with a statement written by Asquith reiterating the duty of officers to obey lawful orders but claiming that the incident had been a misunderstanding. Seely then added an unauthorised assurance, countersigned by Sir John French (the professional head of the army), that the government had no intention of using force against Ulster. Asquith repudiated the addition, and required Seely and French to resign, taking on the War Office himself, retaining the additional responsibility until hostilities against Germany began.

Within a month of the start of Asquith's tenure at the War Office, the UVF landed a large cargo of guns and ammunition at Larne, but the Cabinet did not deem it prudent to arrest their leaders. On 12 May, Asquith announced that he would secure Home Rule's third passage through the Commons (accomplished on 25 May), but that there would be an amending bill with it, making special provision for Ulster.

On 8 July Asquith told the King that he wished to prorogue Parliament in August, ready for a short autumn session and then a general election in 1915.

But the Lords made changes to the amending bill unacceptable to Asquith, and with no way (EXPLAIN) to invoke the Parliament Act on the amending bill, Asquith agreed to meet other leaders at an all-party conference on 21 July at Buckingham Palace, chaired by the King. When no solution could be found, Asquith and his cabinet planned further concessions to the Unionists, but this did not occur as the crisis on the Continent erupted into war.

In September 1914, after the outbreak of the conflict, Asquith announced that the Home Rule bill would go on the statute book (as the Government of Ireland Act 1914) but would not go into force until after the war; in the interim a bill granting special status to Ulster would be considered. This solution satisfied neither side.

Foreign and defence policy

Asquith led a deeply divided Liberal Party as Prime Minister, not least on questions of foreign relations and defence spending. Under Balfour, Britain and France had agreed upon the Entente Cordiale. In 1906, at the time the Liberals took office, there was an ongoing crisis between France and Germany over Morocco, and the French asked for British help in the event of conflict. Grey, the Foreign Secretary, refused any formal arrangement, but gave it as his personal opinion that in the event of war Britain would aid France. France then asked for military conversations aimed at co-ordination in such an event. Grey agreed, and these went on in the following years, without cabinet knowledge—Asquith most likely did not know of them until 1911. When he learned of them, Asquith was concerned that the French took for granted British aid in the event of war, but Grey persuaded him the talks must continue.

More public was the naval arms race between Britain and Germany. The Moroccan crisis had been settled at the Algeciras Conference, and Campbell-Bannerman's cabinet approved reduced naval estimates, including postponing the laying down of a second Dreadnought-class battleship. Tenser relationships with Germany, and that nation moving ahead with its own dreadnoughts, led Reginald McKenna, when Asquith appointed him First Lord of the Admiralty in 1908, to propose the laying down of eight more British ones in the following three years. This prompted conflict in the Cabinet between those who supported this programme, such as McKenna, and the "economists" who promoted economy in naval estimates, led by Lloyd George and Churchill. There was much public sentiment for building as many ships as possible to maintain British naval superiority. Asquith mediated among his colleagues and secured a compromise whereby four ships would be laid down at once, and four more if there proved to be a need. The armaments matter was put to the side during the domestic crises over the 1909 budget and then the Parliament Act, though the building of warships continued at an accelerated rate.

The Agadir crisis of 1911 was again between France and Germany over Moroccan interests, but Asquith's government signalled its friendliness towards France in Lloyd George's Mansion House speech on 21 July. Late that year, the Lord President of the Council, Viscount Morley, brought the question of the communications with the French to the attention of the Cabinet. The Cabinet agreed (at Asquith's instigation) that no talks could be held that committed Britain to war, and required cabinet approval for co-ordinated military actions. Nevertheless, by 1912, the French had requested additional naval co-ordination and late in the year, the various understandings were committed to writing in an exchange of letters between Grey and French Ambassador Paul Cambon. The relationship with France disquieted some Liberal backbenchers and Asquith felt obliged to assure them that nothing had been secretly agreed that would commit Britain to war. This quieted Asquith's foreign policy critics until another naval estimates dispute erupted early in 1914.

New Material to be worked in

Grigg Vol 3 pp16-17 mentions 13 February 1912 eve of session dinner for ministers at which Asquith denied rumours he was to step down to allow a contest between Grey and Lloyd George. Runciman thought they'd been intriguing and were being publicly slapped down. On 8 March 1912 they sat on the same table as Asquith, along with Morley and Crewe, at a lunch for 500 Liberals in his honour in Covent Garden. Both men made unscheduled speeches, Lloyd George speaking of the "affection" in which Asquith was held by his supporters. Selwyn Lloyd almost sacked as Foreign Secretary from Williams, also stuff about Butler as Home Secy Butler Booker Prize in December 1973: Jew Boys

• Koss Asquith

It was suggested that Earl Spencer, who had been rejected as Prime Minister by Queen Victoria in 1894, might be Prime Minister, perhaps with Rosebery taking the Colonial Office, its prestige recently enhanced by Joseph Chamberlain’s tenure. There was also talk of Spencer becoming Foreign Secretary, and of either Rosebery or Asquith becoming Prime Minister, or perhaps of Campbell-Bannerman becoming a temporary Prime Minister until the Liberals had won an election. However, Spencer suddenly fell ill and Campbell-Bannerman suddenly became more determined.

Rosebery was excluded from the Relugas Compact, which was negotiated in early September 1905 (the exact movements are unclear). The three men had already tipped off Morley that they were reluctant to serve under Campbell-Bannerman as Prime Minister in the Commons, although they might be willing to serve under him as a figurehead Prime Minister in the Lords. Asquith was to be Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader in the Commons, Grey Foreign Secretary or perhaps Colonial Secretary, and Haldane, who had no previous ministerial experience, Lord Chancellor. Haldane was given the job of keeping the King informed and hopefully getting him to lend his influence; he wrote to Lord Knollys on 12 September. A fortnight later the King told him that when the time came he would do the correct thing and invite Campbell-Bannerman to form a government, but would urge him to accept a peerage on grounds of his age.

Asquith, the strongest politically and the one who knew Campbell-Bannerman best, was given the job of persuading him to accept semi-retirement. Campbell-Bannerman returned from the continent on 11 November, and Asquith saw him on 13 November. “What would you like? The Exchequer, I suppose?” Asquith ended up giving “advice” and coming away with a near-refusal from Campbell-Bannerman. Asquith and Haldane both later claimed that it had been a “defensive” measure, but in their papers they frequently talked of “putting a pistol to C.B.’s head”. Asquith later justified his desertion of his friends by claiming that circumstances had changed, as Balfour had now resigned rather than asking for an election, and that he had to ensure the future of free trade by making sure a Liberal Government was formed. This was untrue, as Balfour did not in fact resign until three weeks later. Grey only became Foreign Secretary after Lord Cromer had refused it. Grey and Haldane lived together in Haldane’s flat at Whitehall Court at the time, but they found Asquith hard to get hold of.

On 11 October Asquith gave a speech at Earlsferry stating that there would be no immediate Home Rule, angering John Morley. On 25 November Asquith urged Herbert Gladstone (who agreed) that the Unionists should be encouraged to dissolve rather than resign. On 25 November Rosebery made a speech at Bodmin repudiating Home Rule, not much different in substance from Asquith’s Earlsferry speech but causing Asquith to believe that there could be no place for Rosebery in the next Liberal Government. Asquith was still lobbying Campbell-Bannerman to appoint Haldane to the position of Lord Chancellor.

Rosebery’s Bodmin speech increased the likelihood of Balfour resigning. Campbell-Bannerman and Grey travelled to London on night of 3 December. Balfour resigned at 4 pm on 4 December.

Campbell-Bannerman saw Asquith and Haldane, then saw the King at 11.45 am on Tues 5 December, and accepted invitation to form a government. However Grey, who had not been in communication with Asquith, then saw Campbell-Bannerman and insisted on the terms of the Relugas Compact, and that Rosebery be invited to join the government. Asquith urged Campbell-Bannerman to go to the Lords on 5 December, and again on Wed 6 December. That day articles appeared in “The Times” and the “Westminster Gazette” suggesting that Campbell-Bannerman might go to the Lords, and Gardiner of the “Daily News”, tipped off by Herbert Gladstone (a supporter of Campbell-Bannerman) at 10.15 pm that this might actually be true, called on Campbell-Bannerman. The latter, who that evening had been told to stand firm by his wife, just arrived from Scotland, came down in his dressing gown to firmly deny the story.

Asquith again called on Campbell-Bannerman on the morning of Thursday 7 December. Each man claimed that the other had been nervous and anxious, although Asquith, by Campbell-Bannerman’s account, was worried that he might lose his seat if he stayed out or that he would be seen to have deserted Grey if he came in. Campbell-Bannerman was trying to fob off Haldane with the post of Attorney-General (attending Cabinet, but not formally a member of it). Over dinner with Haldane Grey agreed to join the government. Haldane took the news to Campbell-Bannerman, who may (it is unclear) have offered him the Home Office. Next day (8 December) Grey told Campbell-Bannerman “Now I have come in I will be loyal to you. If you will forget what I said I will forget what you said”. Asquith knew nothing of any of this until he returned to London; from Hatfield he had recommended Lord Crewe, Rosebery’s son-in-law, for the Foreign Office.

Lloyd George hoped for the Home Office. Morley hoped for the Foreign Office but had to settle for the “gilded pagoda” of the India Office.

He was the most powerful speaker on the government front bench – fluent, to-the-point and set in empirical fact. “Strong in argument but weak in imagination, his terse Latinized oratory had never in itself the magic which compels attention. But when there was attention already (as for an important minister there must be), its exceptional precision and concision told on men’s ears and minds with monumental effect” wrote RCK Ensor. In Cabinet he assumed the role of summarising and synthesising the arguments of others.

Campbell-Bannerman launched the election campaign with a speech at the Albert Hall on 21 December 1905, largely inaudible and going into little detail on policy.

On 29 December Asquith began a speaking tour of Yorkshire, the North-East and Scotland. He concentrated on free trade rather than education or licensing reform, and mentioned that Irish Home Rule was, although desirable in principle, not presently a practical aspiration. He persuaded Campbell-Bannerman that a ban on “Chinese slavery” in South Africa would embroil the government in legal complexity and expensive compensation, and at Cabinet on 3 January 1906 Campbell-Bannerman restricted his ban to cases where import licences for Chinese “coolies” had not been granted by the South African authorities. Morley predicted a tie as in 1885.

The King’s Speech in 1906 proposed 22 bills, including a political settlement for South Africa, reform of the 1902 Education Act, improving the legal position of trade unions and the abolition of plural voting. Asquith was on Loreburn’s 5-man committee on South Africa. Smuts appealed straight to Campbell-Bannerman and thought he deserved most of the credit, a view later shared by Lloyd George. Asquith, however, later claimed that the idea that Campbell-Bannerman had been the driving force was “a ridiculous fiction” and that, exhausted by his wife’s long illness, he had “slept placidly” through many of the meetings in which Asquith, Loreburn, Elgin, Churchill, Sir R. Solomon and Sir John Lawson Walton AG had hammered out the details.

Asquith was technically a highly competent chancellor.

Asquith's first budget on 30 April 1906; he largely inherited the figures from the outgoing Conservative government. He cut naval expenditure. He outflanked the Treasury mandarins by setting up an all-party select committee which reported in favour of higher taxes on “unearned” income. Second budget 18 April 1907. Haldane’s savings at the War Office had contributed to a surplus of over £5m, which Asquith set aside for old-age pensions. Jenkins argues that old age pensions were a response to backbench labour and Liberal pressure, and to Labour by-election victories in the spring of 1907. In fact Asquith’s private secretary had been collecting evidence for him as far back as July 1906, and a scheme was presented to the Cabinet in December 1906. It is more likely that Asquith saw it as the state’s duty to alleviate poverty, in accordance with the doctrines of TR Green, although his Cabinet colleagues may have been moved by external pressures. Some Labour MPs opposed the budget on second reading as they wanted the sugar duty reduced (this was done the following year). Rosebery and Cobdenite Liberals thought the budget opposed thrift, whilst many Conservatives opposed the defence cuts.

Rosebery deeply resented the new government, telling his eldest son that he would be “no son of [his]” if he agreed to second the motion for the Royal Address. Many of Rosebery’s supporters resented Asquith in particular, and he was already beginning to acquire a reputation for excessive drinking. Yet the Radicals did not much like him either. He was always suspected of having been a crypto-Milnerite, despite having supported Churchill’s motion of censure on Lord Milner on 21 March 1906.

John Burns, and a Cabinet minority thought that trade unions ought to be exempt in tort for damages, contrary to the decision of the courts in the 1900 Taff Vale Case. Asquith agreed with the law officers who drafted a new bill which restricted the law of agency to exclude actions like the Taff Vale Case. A private members bill was then proposed, explicitly giving trade unions immunity in tort. Campbell-Bannerman then supported this bill on second reading, despite admitting to not fully understanding the legal technicalities and having allegedly clashed with Asquith in Cabinet. The Lords allowed this to pass and it became the Trades Disputes Act 1906. Lords unwilling to clash with organised labour.

Asquith also supported Birrell’s 1906 Education Bill, which was criticised by nonconformists for not going far enough to remove the religious tests by which nonconformist teachers were often excluded from employment. The Bill was amended beyond recognition in the Lords and Lloyd George insisted that Grey rather than Asquith be appointed to negotiate with Balfour on the issue. The Bill, which did not satisfy Liberal supporters, was eventually dropped, but was the first major example of Conservative peers (and bishops) blocking important measures of the Liberal Government.

Campbell-Bannerman declined advice to ask the King for a general election, instead pursuing a policy of “filling the cup”, i.e. presenting measures for the Lords to vote down, in the hope that public opinion would eventually be outraged. Plural voting rejected. English and Irish land reform were made ineffective by amendment two measures for Scottish land reform rejected as was licensing reform. Ripon proposed 100 peers be asked to sit with Commons, whilst other Liberals favoured drastic reconstruction of the composition of the House of Lords, or even outright abolition. Campbell-Bannerman favoured the “suspensory veto”, i.e. that the Lords be restricted to a power to delay bills for three sessions. Asquith agreed, although he was also sympathetic to the idea of giving the Lords the right to insist on a referendum for constitutional issues. In Cabinet Asquith rallied support for Campbell-Bannerman’s plan (overcoming objections from Grey) and spoke in a passionate three-day debate in the Commons. Resolution passed 24 June 1907.

The 1908 King’s Speech concentrated on a new Licensing Bill. By now the Liberals were faring poorly in by-elections and Lloyd George’s 1906 Merchant Shipping Act and 1907 Patents Act were among the few reforming measures passed.

Campbell-Bannerman, who had had several heart attacks, left for Biarritz on 27 November 1907 and returned, apparently in better health, on 20 January 1908. He chaired eight Cabinet meetings over the next three weeks but was not well enough to attend when Parliament reconvened on 19 January. On 12 February he chaired his last Cabinet and attended Parliament for the last time. Next day he suffered a seizure. At first his doctor discouraged him from resigning, concerned that it might affect his morale, and the King was reluctant to interrupt his holiday at Biarritz, but on 22 March Asquith wrote to Lord Knollys saying that things could not go on as they were, as there was no hope of a return to duty and political life was paralysed by gossip. Campbell-Bannerman resigned early in April and died on 22 April.

Asquith had seemed a natural successor since Campbell-Bannerman’s illness the previous autumn, although Grey, Haldane, Fowler, Loreburn or even Lloyd George were also floated as possible alternatives. Asquith’s stance over the Boer War and his obvious lukewarmness about Irish Home Rule had not been forgotten by many. Munro Ferguson had written to Rosebery (21 December 1907) that Asquith had “a character deteriorated by a vulgar society of another sort & by a free use of wine which he cannot carry. He has come to be quite unreliable, for he would accommodate himself to any line of policy to secure the entitlements of office … Asquith is evidently playing the understudy with great care.”

On 8 April 1908 Asquith kissed hands at Biarritz. He noted that he was the first practising barrister to become Prime Minister since the assassinated Spencer Perceval.

Just before he came to power at the start of March 1908, Gardiner in the Daily News described him as an “ingenious mechanic”, a cold and remote figure to political colleagues (although not to personal friends). He did not seek popularity. He was a “constructive engineer” who would take up and ensure the success of causes pioneered by others. Although lacking in action – he had “Patience rather than momentum”. Margot thought this a fair and perceptive review.

Margot was prone to insomnia and nervous exhaustion, during which she would write innumerable letters, featuring eccentric spelling and punctuation. Koss likens her to Lady Glencora Palliser. She was devoted to her husband and children. The young Oswald Mosley thought her “the match of any woman in wit and more than a match in audacity”. She once knelt to pray with General Booth in a railway carriage (she was horrified that Asquith’s children by his first marriage had not been baptised). She found Asquith’s children, who had inherited something of their father’s emotional detachment, “modest and motionless”.

As Chancellor Asquith had continued to live at 20 Cavendish Square. He, his daughter Violet (his sons from his first marriage had left home or were away at school or university by then), and Margot and his younger children moved into 10, Downing Street in 1908.

After the war Maurice Bowra recalled Margot saying “Money! No more to me than almonds or raisins!” and recording that the Wharf had “an air of extravagance about everything” and that he came away wanting to spend money himself.

Vanessa Bell once asked him at a dinner party “Are you interested in politics?” He was warned by Edwin Montagu that he risked offending Nonconformist opinion by his compulsive attendance at the theatre, golf, the bridge table and dinner parties. Lytton Strachey wrote “the middle class legal don became a voyeur” and suggested that he gradually went to seed under the influence of drink and socialising. Koss rejects this claim, arguing that Asquith’s strengths and weaknesses (according to one’s perspective) – his capacity for work, his contempt for demagogy and his constant attempts to balance contending factions – were the same in 1916 as in 1908, but that “the world had turned on its axis”.

On becoming Prime Minister in 1908 Lord Portsmouth, whom Asquith had once tutored, was sacked from his under-secretaryship at the War Office, partly on the recommendation of Edward VII.

Morley claimed that Asquith offered him the Exchequer in 1908, a claim which Koss thinks unlikely, and that he took a peerage to escape the moral pressure to defend a non-Gladstonian government in the House of Commons. He also claimed that Lloyd George demanded the Exchequer by threatening to resign in 1908, although there is no corroboration for this. Morley threatened to resign at least 23 times in the course of Asquith’s premiership.

Churchill declined the Admiralty in 1908 (CHECK) – it was given to McKenna instead. Violet’s claim that he declined the Local Government Board is untrue – his letters show that he hoped to be appointed Colonial Secretary.

Vaughan Nash, whom Asquith inherited as Private Secretary, thought him “A1 to have dealings with”, adding “Mrs A. I find an effort”

Koss likened him not just to Gladstone and his mentor Peel, but to Peel’s mentor Lord Liverpool, who delegated much business but kept a quiet eye on departments and made sure business was proceeding in accordance with his plans. He spent much of his time resolving quarrels between colleagues, but he himself rejected suggestions that he was a mere figurehead Prime Minister. “His powerful brain operated directly upon questions as they were put before him, and he never seemed to go in search of them”, wrote Birrell.

Koss, echoing Jo Grimond, likens Asquith to Gladstone in that he sought to turn moral struggle into practice and raise the standard of intellectual life as well as providing economic growth (REPHRASE). As a boy of 12 he was taken to the House of Commons in 1865 to hear his relative Edward Baines propose his annual motion in favour of household franchise. Like Gladstone he distinguished between “real” public opinion and organised agitation (in Asquith’s day by suffragettes, trade unionists and Ulsterman), and also he looked down his nose at politicians from more humble backgrounds like Bonar Law and Lloyd George, just as Gladstone had despised Joseph Chamberlain. However he differed from Gladstone in his openness to social reform and to progressive taxation, and as early as 1908 confessed that his faith in free trade was based purely on pragmatism rather than dogma.

Asquith’s leadership was formally endorsed by a party meeting at the Reform Club on 29 April 1908. Sir John Brunner, in the chair, urged him to maintain “the dignity and power” of the Commons, under challenge from the Lords, and to keep up Campbell-Bannerman’s objective that Britain be “at the head of a league for peace”. John Morley, who had absented himself from the endorsement for Campbell-Bannerman in 1899, drafted the resolution in support of Asquith.

Liberals had lost 6 seats to the Tories and 4 to labour under Campbell-Bannerman, and in 1908 they would lose another four to the Tories, suggesting that the Tories might well win the next election. Many Liberals regretted that there had not been an election in 1907 when the Lords rejected the Plural Voting Bill and the Education Bill.

There was a £4.7m surplus for 1907-8, and he anticipated a surplus of £4.98m for 1908-9, making it possible to pay for old age pensions, and a partial reduction in sugar duties, for which Labour MPs had pushed. Done partly to stop the haemorrhage of support at by-elections.

Coal Mines Regulation Act set a maximum eight hour working day in the mines, the first statutory limitation on the hours of men (as opposed to women or children). For the second time in a year, an education bill was presented but failed, causing nonconformist abstention at the polls. A Licensing Bill was rejected by the Lords. This had been given top billing in the King’s Speech of January 1908, intended as an answer to Balfour’s Licensing Act of 1904, which had been seen as t favourable to Tory-supporting brewers and encouraging drunkenness. Bill reduced the numbers of pubs and cut licensing hours. As early as August 1908, Haldane urged Asquith to increase direct taxes so as to pay for social reforms, defence spending and paying off the National Debt. After veto by 272–96, and after further lobbying by Brunner who spoke for backbench Liberal opinion, Asquith said at a dinner at National Liberal Club on 11 December 1908, Asquith said “I invite the Liberal Party to-night to treat the veto of the House of Lords as the dominating issue in politics” to standing cheers. Honeymoon was over, and he was seen to be giving a firm lead.

By early 1908, just as Asquith was about to become Prime Minister, backbench “economists” and allies in the Cabinet wanted to cut the naval estimates, even at the cost of the Two-Power Standard, and failing that to cut Haldane’s Army estimates. Then and again in the autumn he was studiously ambiguous. Asquith set up a committee of Lloyd George, Churchill and Harcourt. Churchill proposed a scheme for cuts in the Army estimates. Asquith sent Esher to warn him that he might bring the government down, Churchill backed down by end of June.

Then the dreadnought clamour began. McKenna had become a hawk. Fisher and his press allies wanted 8. Churchill, Lloyd George and Morley, and Brunner on the backbenches, wanted 4. McKenna wanted 6. Lloyd George sent Asquith a 13-page appeal in February1909. In March 1909 Asquith proposed 4 now and 4 later, promising he would resign if the compromise was not accepted, despite “economists” having a majority in the Cabinet.

After the Lords rejected the Licensing Bill late in 1908, Lucy Masterman recorded that Churchill “was perfectly furious (italics) … stabbed at his bread, would hardly speak” and threatened that “We shall send them up such a Budget in June as shall terrify them, they have started the class war, they had better be careful”.

The Budget was intended to address projected deficit of £16m (economy had turned down) and it was expected peers would back down as they had over Paper Duties in 1860-1.

The Cabinet considered the Budget in a series of fourteen meetings, sometimes as many as three a week, from mid March until just after the Easter recess. In later years both Asquith and Lloyd George exaggerated the degree to which the latter forced his radicalism on an unwilling Cabinet. In fact, only on one occasion, on 19 March, was Lloyd George overruled by the Cabinet. Asquith played an important, albeit low-key, role in steering the budget through the Cabinet – Lloyd George later recalled one occasion in which various ministers had made strong attacks on a proposal, only for Asquith to sum up the discussion by saying that the Cabinet were in substantial agreement and moving on. The same was true when the budget was presented to the House of Commons: Asquith voted in only 202 of the 554 divisions, but helped out by speaking in early morning debates after the house had been sitting all night.

Lloyd George’s budget speech meandered and his grasp of statistics was a bit woolly. At this point in their careers Asquith and Lloyd George were firm allies, notwithstanding their earlier disagreements over Welsh Disestablishment in the 1890s, over the Boer War and Free Trade in the 1900, and their later vicious falling-out. 16 July Lord Lansdowne warned that the peers would not “swallow the Finance Bill whole without wincing”. Asquith rebuked Churchill on 21 July 1909. 17 August Lloyd George wrote to his brother in glee that the Lords might reject the budget, and was soon claiming that this had been his intention all along. 8 September Cabinet considered possibility of rejection, 17 September Asquith spoke to an audience of 13,000 at Birmingham (“that way revolution lies”).[Blewett Peers & People erroneously attrbutes this speech to Balfour in text & FN]] 5 October Cabinet again considered possibility of rejection; Asquith pushed them to wait on events. Budget finally passed the Commons on 4 November 1909, after 42 days in committee stage, by 379–149 with Irish MPs abstaining as they opposed increase in whiskey duty.

The Government had planned for an election no earlier than autumn 1910. A January election was at short notice and with an out-of-date electoral register. Jenkins believed Asquith was genuinely trying to face down the Conservative peers and hoping that they would see sense. Koss argues that Asquith overestimated Balfour’s control over his own right wing (many of them “Whole Hoggers” who wanted a chance to bring in protectionism). Furthermore, although most Liberals were agreed on the need to reform the House of Lords, there was no agreement on the way forward: a suspensory veto (proposed by CB, Asquith had been lukewarm), joint sittings (as advocated by Ripon in 1907), or complete abolition.

30 November peers rejected budget by 350–75. Within 24 hours Commons resolution attacked this as an attack on the constitution. Next day Asquith attacked “this new-fangled Caesarism which converts the House of Lords into a sort of plebiscitary organ”. Parliament prorogued 3 December. Asquith’s speech at Albert Hall was men-only to exclude suffragette disruption. He restated the Liberals’ commitment to abolition of the Lords’ veto, Irish Home Rule, Welsh Disestablishment, Education and Licensing Reform, Scottish Land Reform and other “costly social programmes”, but without going into great detail on any of these. Said they would not remain in office without “safeguards”. In Koss’ description, he was asking for “a blank cheque”, perhaps influenced by his private knowledge of the King’s reluctance to create peers.

Six day after the Albert Hall rally, Cabinet decided timetable. Asquith was absent as comforting his daughter Violet after the death of her close friend Lord Aberdeen in a car accident. She was “fragile”. Asquith spoke twice at Liverpool on 21 December and campaigned for a week in the New Year. He was exhausted and soon departed for Cannes for a holiday, having to apologise to the King after forgetting to attend an engagement at Windsor. Margot was worried that Lloyd George was alienating Moderate opinion: she thought his speeches “a disgrace (Italics): vulgar, silly and infinitely bad for us … I have given up reading them they are so disgusting”. However, Lloyd George had a deep appeal to Nonconformist voters. Robert Perks stood down in protest at the “socialistic” budget.

After January 1910, Irish Nats and Labour wanted immediate abolition of the Lords veto. Cabinet, including Asquith himself, unsure of how to proceed. 21 February 1910, had to inform the Commons that he had no “safeguards”. The Master of Elibank called the speech “the very worst I have ever heard him make”.

Lucy Masterman noted “Asquith personally dislikes the Irish” and would have preferred to concentrate on getting the budget through before having to worry about Lords reform. But Labour also wanted to get the Osborne Judgement reversed, and nonconformist voters wanted to remove the Lords as an obstacle to educational and licensing reform. Harcourt threatened to resign if the Lords was not reformed (in accordance with CB’s “solemn pledge) but Grey threatened to resign if the government did push ahead, with support from Runciman, McKenna and possibly Haldane and Crewe; Morley was also threatening to resign, although this was a not uncommon threat. Harold Spender joked (repeated with glee with Lloyd George) that Morley treated the threat to create peers as an orthodox Christian might treat the threat to add a fourth person to the Holy Trinity.

28 February government announced that veto resolutions would take priority over the budget. Headed off a Cabinet revolt. Haldane drafted a compromise in which ministers “agreed to differ”. In mid March the committee recommended a policy similar to Campbell-Bannerman’s and the Cabinet, including Grey and Churchill, united behind it on the promise that further reform of the composition of the Lords would follow. It was then decided to call Redmond’s bluff and decline to make changes to the budget. 14 April Parliament Bill had first Reading, Asquith promised no dissolution without “guarantees”. Elibank wrote “It was a grand Parliamentary triumph for the Prime Minister. All his lost prestige has been recovered”. Resolutions passed, and within a fortnight the budget passed by 93 votes, including 62 of the Irish Nat MPs.

King died as Asquith was taking a holiday in Portugal with McKenna and his young wife. An attempt to alter the Royal Declaration annoyed Nonconformists, who wanted to keep the traditional clauses denouncing Roman Catholicism, and who objected to an open declaration in favour of Establishment.

17 June – 10 November fifteen clandestine meetings, to annoyance of Irish Nats, Labour and both sets of backbenchers. Lord Cawdor was one of the Tories. Grey and Crewe were not unsympathetic to Lloyd George’s scheme for coalition. JL Garvin called the conference “The Truce of God”.

11 November Asquith to Sandringham, left King with impression that he would not have to commit himself until after an election. 14 November Knollys told King Asquith wanted guarantees for next Parliament. King telegraphed back via Arthur Bigge, no contingent guarantees and reminded Asquith he had promised not to ask for guarantees during this Parliament. Cabinet debated it on 15 Nov and agreed to keep matter secret until necessary. Bigge thought this “unEnglish” but King agreed as Knollys had kept from him Balfour’s willingness to form a Conservative government.

Asquith and Crewe saw the King on the afternoon of 16 October “the most important political occasion of [my] life” “I disliked having to do this very much, but agreed that this was the only alternative to the Cabinet resigning” A recent by-election a Walthamstow went well for the Liberals. At National Liberal Club on 19 November he ridiculed the “constitutional jerry-builders” who produced endless schemes for House of Lords reform. His role in the election was praised by Churchill in January 1911.

Asquith hoped in vain that the Conservatives would treat the second election as a mandate for the Parliament Bill, just as they had treated the January election as a mandate for the budget.

Third Reading in House of Commons on 15 May, after 900 amendments in the House of Commons. 20 July Asquith informed Balfour and Lansdowne in duplicate letters of his intention to ask for the creation of peers. 24 July the attempt to shout him down in the Commons. Genuine anger at his bullying of the King, his dependence on Irish separatists, and his casuistry. The precedent for creating a minimum number of peers was the Treaty of Utrecht in 1711–12. On 10 August Morley, deputising for Crewe, announced in Lords that the King had agreed to create enough peers to defeat “any possible combination” which might defeat the bill.

In October 1910 Asquith agreed to relieve Morley of his responsibilities, only to find that Morley had changed his mind. As Lord President Morley ended up acting as India Secretary or Foreign Secretary when Crewe and Grey ill, and steering Parliament Bill through the Lords.

GR Askwith likened the dock strike as a repeat of the labour unrest of 1833–4, a worrying analogy after the similarity with the passage of the Great Reform Act. 11 August Cabinet had been called in case the Lords threw out the Parliament Bill, but was instead taken up by labour discussions, as was another on 16 August.

In his two volume work “Fifty Years of Parliament” Asquith relegated women’s suffrage to “miscellanea”. He had spoken against it as early as 1882, and again in opposition to a bill in 1907. so it was not just militancy which annoyed him. Violet defended him with her fists at Lossiemouth “I was, alas, a blackleg – a blackleg without even the decent covering of Blue Stocking” 17 November 1911 Asquith had a reluctant and unsatisfactory interview with a WPSU delegation. 6 May 1913 Asquith said openly in the Commons that womens’ suffrage would damage standards of chivalry and courtesy. Koss argues that Asquith’s rhetoric simply inflamed matters further.

It had been feared that the coalminers would join the railwaymen in strike in August 1911. In February 1912 the Miners Federation prepared to strike unless they were paid 5s per shift for men and 2s for boys. On 28 February Asquith, Lloyd George, Buxton and Grey met a miners’ delegation at the Foreign Office. Asquith accepted the principle of a minimum wage, but thought “5 and 2” too high. The miners went on strike at midnight on 29 February, and in the early hours of 27 March Asquith pushed a bill through the Commons (the Lords, as a matter of principle, did not oppose trade union measures), setting up district boards, on which trade unions would be represented, to set a minimum wage. Asquith was insistent that this only apply to miners. The miners returned to work at the end of April. Morley had been opposed. Grey was in favour, even wanting to compensate coalowners if necessary. Asquith took a middle ground in all this, although in May 1912 he helped to block Haldane’s proposal to extend minimum wage machinery to Port of London dockers. In 1912 40.89m working days were lost to strikes, four times the total in 1911 or 1913 and equal to the total for the whole of the preceding eight years. The total number of stoppages was less in 1912 than in 1911 or 1913.

The strikes and suffragette activity contributed to an atmosphere of mounting tension and crisis in these years.

Easter Tuesday Bonar Law spoke at Balmoral, Belfast “a besieged city”. Also Blenheim 29 July 1912. Lloyd George was well aware nonconformists were not sympathetic to Roman Catholic Irishmen and wanted Welsh Disestablishment and educational reform.

“I do not believe in the prospect of civil war” Asquith told a large public meeting at Dublin in July 1912. Koss thinks he may have been “whistling in the dark” in assuming his opponents would ultimately obey the law. Tories contemplated withdrawal from Westminster, Irish tactics of obstruction, amending the Army Act or begging King to revive veto or even dismiss the Government.

Asquith countermanded Churchill’s order to deploy the Third Battle Squadron and on 27 March made a firm statement to the House disavowing the “peccant paragraphs”. A new Army Order reiterated the duty of officers to obey lawful orders and the principle of civilian control. Asquith was trusted by both sides, although George Riddell thought him “a crafty old dog”.

The Government did poorly in by-elections in the spring of 1914, including Charles Masterman who did not get back in until 1914. Asquith was again shouted down in the House in April 1914, ”proper and justified”, according to the “Daily Express”, as he “deserve[d] neither respect nor a hearing”.

21–24 July 1914 Speaker’s Conference on Ireland an “utter fiasco” in Koss’ words, and his Irish policy “dilatory and insufficient”. Jenkins argues that he made his stand on the inviolability of the Parliamentary system, but Koss suggests that he may have been “taken in by his own bluff” when it might have been wiser to prosecute some individuals for sedition.

Stephen McKenna argued that Asquith deliberately solved each crisis by creating another; Koss rejects this view as “fatuous”, but argues that Asquith often made matters worse by refusing to take swifter action. Cameron Hazelhurst argued that “the record of a prime minister under whom the nation goes to the brink of civil war must be subjected to the severest scrutiny”.

After the passage of the Parliament Act Asquith went quiet for a bit and by spring 1913 the press were reporting rumours that he might resign. <THIS COINCIDES WITH THE PERIOD OF HIS ILLNESS & ATTEMPT TO CUT BACK HIS DRINKING???>

Arthur Lee recounted a story of Asquith turning up drunk after dinner to a Commons debate on Welsh Disestablishment (so presumably some time in 1912–14), sitting down on the Treasury bench between the two ministers on duty, Herbert Samuel and Rufus Isaacs, and promptly falling asleep, causing Balfour to remark to Lee of his unease that the Welsh Church was in the hands of two sober Jews and one drunk Christian. But Lloyd George had written the same tale to his wife on 21 April 1911 after a debate on the Protestant Succession, claiming that Lord Hugh Cecil had said it to Churchill. Stephen Koss believes that there were probably a relatively small number of such stories, embellished with each retelling.

Asquith wrote to Venetia (21 August 1914) that less than three years had gone by since he had “made [his] great discovery of the real [her]” . Stephen Koss suggests that in the literature of the time this was a euphemsm for starting a sexual relaionship. He also remarks that Asquith's letters to Venetia reveal him to have been vain, lonely and "less sporting in his anti-semitism than [Roy] Jenkins would have us believe".

He also wrote to Lady Scott, Pamela McKenna and Mrs Hilda Harrison. Lady Diana Cooper from age of 17 “I really loved Mr Asquith. He delighted in the young and young people’s conversation”. Dressed him up as a Venetian doge in party at Venice in 1919.

Asquith was busy with the 1906 election campaign so was not party to the decision by Campbell-Bannerman, Grey and Haldane to initiate staff talks with France at the time of the first Moroccan crisis, although it was assumed that he would be supportive. He later came to regret these ad hoc procedures, which marked the start of a drift towards an outcome which few wanted or intended.

Koss argues that Asquith and those close to him were too rational to understand the deep forces fissuring European politics, the same as they did not understand the deep forces in the UK.

Asquith generally left Grey a free hand in Foreign Policy. Lloyd George was mollified by the setting up of a Foreign Policy Committee in December 1910, which was quietly left to expire in July 1911. A subcommittee meeting of the CID met on 23 August 1911 to which Harcourt, Morley and the courtier Lord Esher were not invited.

In the 1906 election Campbell-Bannerman had wanted to put the Liberal Government “at the head of a league for peace”.

On 24 September 1910 Asquith was hopeful that Kiderlen-Waechter would allow a new Anglo-German understanding – it was the Kaiser who would make problems. 21 July 1911 Lloyd George Mansion House Speech “if Britain were to be treated where her interests were vitally affected as of no account … peace at that price would be a humiliation intolerable for a great country to endure”. Churchill and Lloyd George swung over to the hawks.

Churchill was appointed to shake up the Admiralty, rather than Haldane who wanted the job. Quite possibly, as Jenkins argues, it was tactical to bring him over to the economists.

Asquith apparently just found out about the Anglo-French military talks. He wrote to Grey on 5 September that the French should not be encouraged to plan on the basis of British military or diplomatic support.

“The Nation”, the “Manchester Guardian” and the “Daily News” all urged reconciliation with Germany so that the naval arms race could be halted, as did the executive of the National Liberal Federation and various Free Church groups.

Haldane was sent to Berlin in February 1912, supposedly to discuss University Affairs. Repington, the Times military correspondent, guessed correctly that the Cabinet inner circle were largely going through the motions to appease their own grassroots supporters, and Churchill later admitted as much. The Germans agreed to delay the construction of one dreadnought, but demanded a British declaration of neutrality. As early as April 1912 Asquith believed that further negotiations would be fruitless, although negotiations about the Berlin-Baghdad railway and an Anglo-German carveup of Portugal’s colonies continued until 1914.

During the spring and summer of 1912 the Liberals performed poorly at by-elections, partly because of Lloyd George’s new National Insurance, but also because of grassroots Liberal discontent with the naval arms race. Lloyd George was beginning to align with doveish members of the Cabinet against Churchill’s naval expenditure, and leaking his views to the press, although Churchill had the cautious backing of Asquith, Grey and Haldane.

Asquith was well aware that he was managing a large de facto coalition. Irish Nationalists were required to accept social reform in exchange for Home Rule. Radicals were required to accept some naval expenditure, and Nonconformists Home Rule, as the price of keeping a Liberal government.

Asquith toyed with the idea of an election in April 1913, by which time the National Insurance Act would be safely on the statute book. An election would either provide a clear mandate for Home Rule and Welsh Disestablishment, or else provide a release from the Liberals’ dependence on the Irish Nationalists. Over Christmas he sought the advice of Lloyd George, who preferred to wait until June so that the National Insurance Act had a chance to take root and the economy had a chance to revive further.

Liberal grassroots opinion was strongly opposed to high expenditure on armaments. 8 December 1913 Cabinet 3 hours of which 2.75 was taken up by Churchill. Lloyd George was rumoured to be wanting to resign to take lead of backbench radicals, although observers thought Churchill more likely to be forced out. New Years Day interview to “Daily Chronicle” then went to Algiers. 20 January 1914 Asquith, just back from Antibes, supervised reconciliation between Churchill and Lloyd George. 11 February 1914 saw reconciliation.

By 1914 Burns despised Lloyd George and Churchill as publicity-seekers and was regarded by them as impediments to reform. McKenna distrusted Churchill and hated Haldane. Runciman clashed bitterly with Lloyd George about university grants.

By early 1914 Liberal performance in by-elections had improved, and Grey favoured a general election as soon as the Home Rule Bill passed. Asquith, like many Liberals, wanted to delay the next election until the anomaly of plural voting had been abolished. He regarded it as a serious possibility that the King might insist on a general election (in which the Liberals would probably perform poorly) as a condition for his agreeing not to veto the bill, or that he might simply dismiss the government.

Woy Jenkins

In July 1905 Balfour had to warn the Tories in a private meeting that the state of Foreign Affairs made a change of government undesirable. In August King Edward VII met Campbell-Bannerman on holiday at Marienbad and the two of them patched up their relationship.

In early September 1905 Asquith, Grey and Haldane met at Relugas.

On 12 September Haldane wrote a long letter to the King’s adviser Lord Knollys. The King was still on his way back from holiday, but Knollys replied that it would be better for the three men to serve rather than allow Campbell-Bannerman to form a radical-dominated government. Grey wrote to Haldane (2 October 1905) that it was “too soon to put a pistol to CB’s head”. On 5 October Haldane visited Balmoral; the King seemed to agree to ask Campbell-Bannerman to accept a peerage. On 13 November Asquith called on Campbell-Bannerman. According to the account which Asquith later relayed to Margot, they ended up talking about Russia and Germany. “What would you like? The Exchequer I suppose?” “Or the Home Office” “Certainly not”. “The Woolsack?” Campbell-Bannerman made clear that he would only go to the Lords at the point of a bayonet. Asquith persuaded him to appoint Grey Foreign Secretary rather than War Secretary. In November 1905 the Conservative National Union passed a “whole hog” tariff reform resolution against Balfour’s advice. On 23 November Campbell-Bannerman gave a speech at Stirling, arguing that Irish Home Rule was a long-term aspiration, not a priority. Grey wrote to Asquith on 24 November opposing taking office if Balfour resigned. On 25 November Asquith wrote Campbell-Bannerman a long letter urging that Haldane be appointed Lord Chancellor, urging him not to take office if Balfour resigned. On 25 November Rosebery gave his speech at Bodmin. Somewhat reinterpreting Campbell-Bannerman’s recent comments on Irish Home Rule he spoke of “the hoisting of the flag of Irish Home Rule” “emphatically and explicitly and once and for all I cannot serve under that banner”. Asquith and Grey were irritated by Rosebery’s speech.

In December 1905 Asquith was about to go to Egypt to pick up the Khedive’s brief.

Following urgent telegrams from Morley and Herbert Gladstone, Campbell-Bannerman took the night train from Scotland on Sunday 3 December 1905. The next day he saw Asquith and Grey, but they discussed Ireland and other policies, not the distribution of offices. Asquith wrote to Haldane urging him to accept office, especially as an election on the issue of free trade was imminent.

At 10 pm on Monday 4 December 1905 Grey told Campbell-Bannerman that he would refuse to serve unless Campbell-Bannerman went to the Lords.

On 9 December Campbell-Bannerman’s doctor, drawing on an earlier conversation, urged him to go the House of Lords.

On Thursday 7 December Asquith wrote a long letter to Haldane urging him to accept office. Asquith recommended to Campbell-Bannerman that Grey be appointed Foreign Secretary (although he also suggested Crewe for the position on the assumption that Grey had refused it) and Haldane War Secretary. Campbell-Bannerman also sent Haldane a letter, which arrived at the same time, offering him the post of Attorney-General or some other post “involving Cabinet rank”. Haldane and Grey had dinner at the Café Royal, then broke off after the fish course, to visit Campbell-Bannerman and call him out from dinner. Grey accepted the Foreign Office and Haldane the War Office, having first declined the Home Office.

On the afternoon of Monday 11 December ministers were appointed. Haldane, Grey and Fowler were caught in a thick “pea souper” fog and had to abandon their cab on the Mall – it took Grey an hour to reach the Foreign Office on foot (normally about fifteen minutes’ walk) whilst Fowler ended up back at Buckingham Palace.

Asquith was the most powerful chancellor since Harcourt, who had also been leader in the Commons, in the 1892-5 Parliament.

Herbert Gladstone lived at 11, Downing Street during the 1905-8 government. Campbell-Bannerman spoke at the Albert Hall on 21 December 1905, just prior to the calling of the election.

14,000 licences for coolie importation had already been granted in November 1905 and not yet taken up. Asquith opposed retrospective legislation or compensation. Campbell-Bannerman agreed at Cabinet on 3 January 1906 to reinterpret the pledge as being one of no further recruitment. Hilaire Belloc wrote an anti-Semitic poem about Jewish financiers who had done well out of the Boers.

There were already 47,000 Chinese “coolies” in South Africa. In June 1907 the Transvaal government took its own decision to send the Chinese home.

The Liberals achieved the highest majority since 1832. Asquith’s own majority did not increase much from 1900, nor this time did he poll better than Campbell-Bannerman at Stirling Boroughs. On 15 January Balfour declared that “the great Unionist Party should still control, whether in power or whether in opposition, the destinies of this great Empire”. The new Cabinet met on 31 January 1906. Parliament reassembled on 22 February. The King’s Speech contained 22 bills, including measures on education, plural voting and trade unions.

Asquith appointed Dilke as chairman of the Select Committee to recommend higher taxes on unearned income. The Committee recommended as Asquith wished (including a super tax, which was implemented in 1909), although Dilke himself opposed it. He wanted a separate property tax, as in Holland and Prussia.

The 1906 budget cut income tax from 1s in the pound to 9d for incomes up to £2,000 per annum.

Rosebery thought old age pensions “so prodigal of expenditure as likely to undermine the whole fabric of the Empire”.

A Conference of Dominion Prime Ministers took place in London in the spring of 1907. Deakin and Lyne of Australia, and Jameson and Smartt of Cape Colony, pushed for protection, including speaking to meetings organised by the opposition. Churchill had already declared the door “banged, bolted and barred” by the election result. Laurier of Canada (himself a protectionist) and General Botha of the Transvaal preferred an individual decision on protection by dominion, and remained somewhat aloof from the agitation.

Birrell introduced his Education Bill to the House of Commons on 9 April 1906. The Bill was amended by the Lords in committee to protect denominational teaching. King Edward VII tried to broker a compromise, arranging for talks to be chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Bill was abandoned in December 1906.

The Lords rejected the Plural Voting Bill on the Second Reading. Asquith proposed a Trades Disputes Bill which would maintain even-handedness between employer and employee by restricting the law of agency (EXPLAIN!), and the Attorney-General presented a bill along those lines. Walter Hudson proposed a private member’s bill exempting trade unions from liability for damages in tort. Campbell-Bannerman accepted the Hudson proposals and in August 1906 the Government Bill was amended to include them. Asquith accepted, making clear his reluctance in the House of Commons and making clear that the bill protected unions of employers as well as unions of workers. The Lords allowed the bill to pass, possibly as Labour and the Liberals were divided on it, and perhaps also so that the Lords were not seen to be opposed to Organised Labour. Jenkins argues that this was an ill-considered move as the Lords should have resisted a measure for which no public mandate existed.

Campbell-Bannerman rejected the idea of a Spring 1907 election because the Liberal Party was short of money and he thought that the Education Bill was not popular enough to risk fighting an election on. Asquith pressed these arguments, as did others, and later regretted it, although Jenkins points out that the political will was not yet there to strip the Lords of their veto.

The King’s Speech of February 1907 included a Licensing Bill. Also the King’s Speech spoke openly of the disagreement between the two Houses and of the government’s desire to do something about it.

In May 1907 the committee proposed that differences be resolved by joint sittings of all MPs and 100 peers (including all those holding office), so that a government with a large Commons majority could outvote the peers. Campbell-Bannerman circulated a memo recommending John Bright’s old plan to replace the Lords’ veto with a “suspensory veto”, i.e. a power to delay bills. On 24 June 1907 Campbell-Bannerman presented a resolution on the suspensory veto to the Commons. Asquith, who had helped to achieve consensus in Cabinet, wound up the debate after three days; the Commons passed the resolution by 432 votes to 147. The Lords also wrecked two Scottish Land bills and an Irish Land bill. The session ended on 26 August 1907.

Lady Campbell-Bannerman became seriously ill in the early Spring of 1906, and she died later in the year. He would declare “send for the sledgehammer” when he wanted Asquith to speak for the Government in the Commons.

The Asquiths went on a long holiday to Scotland in August and September 1906, whilst Asquith himself went to Rome for a fortnight in February 1907, the same month Margot’s last pregnancy ended. Raymond married Katherine Horner in 1907. They again took a house in Scotland in the late summer of 1907.

On 13 November 1907 Campbell-Bannerman suffered a severe heart attack at Bristol. He returned from Biarritz on 20 January 1908. Despite later claims there was no hint that he planned a Parliament Bill. Instead the plan was to proceed with the Licensing Bill and to attempt to get the Lords to look at the two Scottish land bills left floundering at the end of the previous session. Campbell-Bannerman made his last speech in the Commons on 20 February 1908. He had another heart attack that night at never again left his room at 10, Downing Street.

Campbell-Bannerman wrote an optimistic letter to Asquith on 2 March. On 3 March the King called on (yep!) Asquith and informed him that he would appoint him as Prime Minister when the time came. The King then called on Campbell-Bannerman the following day. Asquith called on Campbell-Bannerman for the last time on 27 March. A few days later his doctors, who had previously believed that a hope of return to work would aid his recovery, changed their minds and told him to resign. On 1 April Campbell-Bannerman wrote to the King asking permission to resign.

The King wanted the entire Cabinet to come to Biarritz to be appointed, although he backed down after protests from Asquith and from his own adviser Lord Knollys.

King Edward VII vetoed the suggestion that Churchill be appointed to the Cabinet as an Under-Secretary, insisting that he wait for “a real vacancy”.

Asquith insisted that Fisher remain First Sea Lord under McKenna. Morley hinted that he’d have preferred the Exchequer.

On 29 April 1908 a meeting of Liberal MPs and peers and representatives of the party unanimously endorsed Asquith as leader at a meeting at the Reform Club.

The Asquiths were the first Prime Ministerial family to live at 10, Downing Street since the Gladstones in 1892-4.

Asquith took a keen interest in church appointments, and in autumn 1908 appointed Cosmo Long as Archbishop of York.

In the summer of 1908 there was a possibility of compromise with the Lords over the Education Bill, but Randall Davidson was unable to persuade the other bishops. Haldane wrote to Asquith on 9 August 1908, urging that higher taxes be used for social reform, defence and the sinking fund, after the peers had accepted that they were not permitted to amend the Licensing Bill. But they rejected it instead.

Cardinal Burns approached Sir Edward Henry, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and himself a Roman Catholic, in July 1908 to allow a procession of the Host accompanied by priests in full vestments. The Eucharistic Congress row broke out in late August and into September 1908. The Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 clearly banned such a display, but similar ceremonies, albeit on a smaller scale, had taken place in 1898 and 1901. King Edward VII complained that the Home Secretary Herbert Gladstone, who never consulted officials or the police about the matter, was putting pressure on Asquith. Asquith asked Lord Ripon, a Roman Catholic, to ask the Catholic hierarchy not to display the vestments. In the event the process passed off without trouble on Sunday 13 November 1908. Lord Ripon resigned, although he did not publish his reasons. King Edward VII, who had written to Herbert Gladstone suggesting that he resign as Home Secretary, objected to his being appointed Governor-General of South Africa, as he regarded his name as being associated with WE Gladstone’s humiliating decision to make peace with the Boers after Majuba Hill.

Early in 1909 the Admiralty put forward demands for six new capital ships for 1910-1. Churchill circulated a paper sceptical of the dangers of a German naval challenge on 2 February. Lloyd George sent round a thirteen page letter in his own hand, hinting at resignation. At Cabinet on 10 February Lloyd George, Churchill, Harcourt, Burns and Morley were the “economists” against Grey, Runciman, Crewe and Buxton. A Cabinet Committee made little progress. Asquith took the lead at Cabinet on 24 February 1909, later writing that “a sudden curve developed of which I took immediate advantage”. It was agreed to build four dreadnoughts now and another four later. The need for naval expenditure made it necessary for the budget to be strongly radical.

It is unlikely that the Liberals thought the Lords would reject the budget. Between the end of March and Budget Day (29 April) there were fourteen Cabinet Meetings, largely about the budget, including three in some weeks. A separate group of measures tended to be discussed each week.

On 19 and 24 March Lloyd George was overruled about Land Tax on land values and ground rents, on the ground that it might affect existing contracts, the only case of his being overruled at Cabinet about the Budget.

It took 42 days, including night sessions and no summer recess, to get the bill through, until 6 October 1909. The budget finally passed the Commons on 4 November 1909, with Asquith coming in early before breakfast to steer the final session, which had been through an all-night sitting.

Lord Lansdowne spoke out against the bill on 16 July. Asquith rebuked Churchill at Cabinet on 21 July for calling publically for an election, following a complaint from Lord Knollys. Asquith’s public stance throughout the summer was that rejection by the Lords was unthinkable – “that way revolution lies” as he told an audience of 13,000 at Birmingham on 17 September.

The King met Balfour and Lansdowne on 5 October 1909, and urged them to pass the budget. They told him – disingenuously, as they had already decided to reject it – that no decision had yet been made. On 5 November, for the first time, the Cabinet met under the assumption that the Lords would reject the budget. One suggestion was that a Finance (No 2) Bill be put forward, to allow the raising of at least some taxes, but Sir Courtney Ilbert, clerk of the House of Commons, pointed out that this effectively still gave the Lords power of veto over taxes; he suggested that the government simply continue to raise taxes until retrospective approval had been given, on the grounds that respect for the principle of the constitution must take priority over strict legality. On 17 November Asquith told the Cabinet that there was no alternative to an election.

On 15 December Lord Knollys told Asquith that the King would not permit the creation of peers until the Liberals had won a second general election. Asquith spoke of “safeguards” in his Albert Hall Speech (to an audience of 20,000) on 20 December, and also gave another major speech at Liverpool, at which he attacked Lord Curzon, who had recently praised the principle of aristocratic government. Parliament was prorogued on 8 January 1910. Churchill later congratulated him at having been more active in the second 1919 election than the first.

In another sense, 1910 saw the largest majority for the left since 1832. The Labour Party Conference at Newport on 8 February was not pro-budget, while Redmond made a threatening speech at Dublin on 10 February. The Irish MPs were unhappy about whiskey duty but abstained on the Third Reading. Many prominent Liberals MPs, including Dilke and Harcourt, urged Asquith to concentrate on the veto over the budget.

Morley and Grey were threatening to resign in the spring of 1910.

In April 1910, after six Cabinet meetings in the course of a week, Asquith announced that there were no guarantees about the creation of peers.

Cabinet meetings on 11, 12 and 13 April opposed concessions to the Irish Nationalists.

Asquith redeemed his reputation by putting forward a plan to deal with the Lords. The Budget passed the House of Commons on 27 April 1910. The Lords passed it without a division.

The Cabinet agreed on a Constitutional Conference – the delegates were Asquith, Lloyd George, Lord Crewe and Augustine Birrell for the Liberals and Balfour, Lansdowne, Austen Chamberlain and Cawdor for the Conservatives. It met twelve times by the end of July, then after a break until October the last meeting was on 10 November. The Conservative Proposal was that bills be divided into three categories. An ordinary bill would, if rejected twice by the Lords, go to a Joint Sitting of both Houses. The Lords would give up any legal right to reject a financial bill (previously it was simply convention that they should did not do so), but no social or political measures could be included in such bills. Finally, a constitutional bill could be put to a referendum if the House of Lords did not agree to it. The Liberals were happy for certain fundamental constitutional laws to be exempt from the Parliament Act, but did not want Irish Home Rule included in this category (Lloyd George proposed, as a compromise, that Home Rule become "ordinary" legislation when the Liberals had won another general election on the topic).

Lloyd George sent a long memorandum containing a 12-point programme for a coalition government on 17 August. Lloyd George claimed that he presented the memo to Asquith first, then to Grey, Crewe, Haldane and Churchill. This is not corroborated by Asquith’s papers, and Mrs Dugdale’s life of Balfour suggests that Lloyd George was intriguing to send Asquith upstairs to the House of Lords (also in the Times obituary of Balfour and in Birkenhead’s life of his father). Asquith certainly had the memo by October 1910 and sounded out other ministers. Lloyd George may well have sounded out other Conservatives, e.g. FE Smith.

Balfour was in favour, but Akers-Douglas told him he’d be another Peel and split the Conservatives.

On 10 November 1910 the Cabinet decided on an election, but Asquith had to obtain “guarantees” to meet his promise of 14 April. Asquith had not raised the issue of guarantees on his visit to Sandringham on 11 October, but to the King’s relief only asked for an election. He initially refused to give guarantees during the present Parliament. In fact Asquith had promised not to ask for guarantees for the present Parliament, not guarantees during the Parliament for future Parliaments.

The Cabinet agreed to keep the King’s promise to create peers secret until it was necessary to reveal it. Knollys got his own way over Bigge by claiming, falsely, that Balfour would decline to form a Conservative government if asked (in fact Balfour had confirmed as long ago a 29 April that he would form a government if asked). On Wednesday 16 October 1910 Asquith (taking time off to attend the wedding of Leo Amery) obtained pledge from the King (“I disliked having to do this very much”).

Parliament was dissolved on 28 November 1910. Asquith dominated the campaign, with speeches at Hill and Reading. The voters were bored and wanted a settlement.

The Coronation was pencilled in for 22 June 1911. Bonar Law and FE Smith, the latter contrary to Balfour’s wishes, were appointed to the Privy Council in the Coronation Honours. The Bill passed the Commons on 15 May 1912, after 900 amendments at the committee stage.

During the debate on the Second Reading Asquith was greeted with cries of “Traitor” (Lloyd George had been booed in Westminster Abbey by Tories. At the end of June and early July the Lords butchered the bill in committee. On 6 July Asquith informed Knollys that he would have to ask for the creation of peers. The King asked for the Lords to be given a chance to reconsider their amendments.

On 24 July 1911 Asquith was cheered on his way to the House of Commons but then howled down in the Chamber to cries of “Divide, divide” “Traitor” “Let Redmond Speak” “American dollars” (referring to the funding of the Irish Nationalist Party) “Who killed the King?” Asquith spent half an hour at the Despatch Box attempting to make himself heard, although Grey later had some success. Balfour was listened to in silence. FE Smith and Lord Hugh Cecil were the ringleaders.

There is no evidence that either the King or Asquith ever considered a limited creation of 100 peers. A list of 249 potential peers is included as Appendix A of Roy Jenkins’ Asquith. The Ditchers included Halsbury, Selborne, Salisbury, Chamberlain, FE Smith and George Wyndham.

It was the hottest week for 70 years, >95 °F (35 °C). The King asked Lord Crewe to speak of his reluctance to agree (Asquith had refused to do so). On the night of 10 August 1911 81 Liberals, 13 bishops and 37 hedgers passed the bill through the House of Lords by 131 to 118.

Asquith’s hesitancy between January and April 1910 wasted three months and wasted the chance of a solution in the lifetime of Edward VII. But on the whole Asquith’s slow moulding of events had amounted to a masterly display of political nerve and patient determination.

Amidst febrile heat (>90 °F (32 °C)) and the Agadir Crisis rumbling on , the Cabinet met on 11 August 1911 to discuss strikes as the House of Lords crisis neared resolution. 1910 had seen the TonyPandy riots in South Wales. In 1911 a seamen’s strike began in the London docks at the end of July, then spread to Liverpool. and talk of a national railway strike. In 1910 in France Briand, Millerand and Viviani (all of them socialists) arrested the leaders of a rail strike and conscripted the rest.

Asquith offered a Royal Commission to consider the railwaymen’s grievances. On 16 November he told them he’d “employ all the forces of the Crown”. Asquith was privately sympathetic but antagonised them. Lloyd George managed to get them back to work.

Labour urged payment of MPs, pending the repeal of the Osborne Judgement. In January 1912 the miners went on strike. The Cabinet met to support a measure for the trade unionists for the 1913 session allowing them to pay a political subscription as part of their subscription. Asquith distributed Knollys’s letter advocating the banning of sympathetic strikes to the Cabinet, so he was able to reject this advice on grounds of Cabinet disagreement.

In January 1912 the miners federation. On 20 February 1912 the Cabinet authorised Asquith, Grey, Lloyd George and Buxton to negotiate a settlement. Between 12 and 13 March the committee could not get the miners to agree to 5s per shift. Grey’s suggestion of compensation for mineowners was rejected by the Cabinet. They set up machinery for arbitration over the doubts of Morley and Churchill. The bill passed both houses in a week.

Haldane vainly urged the Cabinet to extend the miners wage machinery to the Port of London dockers.

In mid April 1912 the miners went back to work, its impetus having been destroyed by the government’s wage machinery bill. A dock strike was now imminent. A Cabinet committee of Lloyd George, Haldane, Beauchamp, Buxton, McKinnon Wood attempted to mediate before it broke out, as did Asquith himself after it had started. At the end of July 1912 the dockers went back to work, defeated.

Lloyd George, who delivered his famous Mansion House speech on 21 July 1911, and Churchill, became hawks over Agadir. A special CID meeting was held on 23 August (Jenkins gives this as 27 August), with Lloyd George and Churchill in attendance. Balfour was away at Bad Gastein. There was a hint of resignation from Haldane. Asquith backed Henry Wilson’s presentation. Haldane drove to Archerfield from his own Scottish estate at Cloan to lobby Asquith for the job of First Lord, only to find Churchill, who had had much further to come, already there. Next day Asquith let both men argue it out amongst themselves. Asquith appointed Churchill, with a mandate to reform the Admiralty, as he wanted the First Lord of the Admiralty to be in the Commons (Haldane had been a viscount since April 1911, after Grey had refused to accept elevation), and perhaps also as he wanted to keep Churchill aligned with the Cabinet hawks. Admiral Arthur Wilson’s term was due to expire in April 1912, but Churchill managed to push him into early retirement by the end of the year.

At the time of Algeciras Grey sanctioned secret military talks with France and said that in his personal view Britain would not stand aside in the event of France being attacked. The Cabinet were not told of the 1905 talks until 1911. It was not a Limp plot, as Campbell-Bannerman and Ripon knew. Grey later admitted he should have obtained Cabinet sanction back in 1906 after the initial talks. In April 1911 Grey wrote to Asquith in terms which suggested Asquith was being informed for the first time. Morley was also brought in at Grey’s insistence. On 5 September 1911 Asquith wrote to Grey that Joffre should not be encouraged to plan on the basis of British assistance. Morley brought the matter up in Cabinet, and it took up two Cabinets on 1 and 15 November 1911. It was agreed that there would be no commitment to France, direct or indirect, without Cabinet approval. Although this was something of a setback for Grey, Asquith remained an admirer of his, and he never threatened to resign.

France requested naval talks in the spring of 1912. The Cabinet spent four meetings discussing the global dispositions of the Royal Navy. There was a written Anglo-French understanding in November 1912 after an exchange of letters between Grey and Cambon; Grey’s letter had been subject to Cabinet discussion and approval. Morley’s subsequent claim that he had been kept in the dark was untrue.

In October 1905 Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney disrupted a meeting Grey’s at Manchester. Grey was in fact a strong proponent of women’s suffrage, and the Liberals were more likely to bring in women’s suffrage than the Conservatives. Lord Weardale was whipped at Euston Station when mistaken for Asquith, whilst John Redmond was wounded in the ear by a hatchet when travelling in the same carriage as Asquith. The windows at Downing Street were smashed several times. In July 1912 Margot is said to have boxed the ears of a woman in a pink dress at an India Office reception. Asquith was attacked by suffragettes in November 1913 when on his way to unveil Campbell-Bannerman’s memorial at Stirling.

Asquith was opposed to militant suffragettes but was not fiercely opposed on principle, unlike FE Smith or Lulu Harcourt. Yet Asquith, along with John Burns and Herbert Samuel, was opposed to the majority of his own Cabinet on the issue, whereas Balfour was also opposed to the majority of his own party.

A Private Member’s Bill granted the vote to women but restricted by age and property, i.e. to women who were more likely to vote Conservative. So Lloyd George and Churchill opposed the Conciliation Bill in the summer of 1910. By May 1911 the majority of the Cabinet was in favour of a bill. In 1912 a week of government time was made available for the committee stage of a women’s suffrage bill, but it narrowly failed to secure a Second Reading.

The Liberals planned a major reform bill, abolishing plural voting and extending the franchise from 7.5 million to 10 million. In July 1912 Asquith expressed his openness to an amendment giving women the vote on the same terms as men. This would have satisfied Lloyd George and Churchill, but angered the more extreme suffragettes, who wanted a bill specifically devoted to women. On 22 January 1913 the Cabinet “agreed to differ” on the amendment. Two days later the Cabinet had to discuss the matter again as the Speaker had decided that the amendment had changed the nature of the bill too much. Asquith was furious, pointing out that the 1867 and 1884 reform acts had both been amended beyond recognition in the course of their passage but privately pleased. The Cabinet agreed to allow another Private Member’s Bill for female suffrage in the next session. The Private Member’s Bill had its second Reading on 6 May 1913 (NOT 1914 CHECK), with Grey the main speaker in favour and Asquith the main speaker against, but was lost by 268–211, in part as a reaction to the militant suffragettes.

The Marconi Contract was concluded in March 1912. The managing Director was the brother of the Attorney-General. There was never any case other than anti-Semitism against Herbert Samuel (Postmaster-General). In April 1912 Isaacs bought 10,000 shares in US Marconi from a third brother, who had obtained them from the brother who was MD of English Marconi. Isaacs proceeded to 1,000 each to Lloyd George and to the Master of Elibank. All made profits for a while, then lost them in the end. There actions were not technically illegal under the law as it stood at the time. The contract was already approved and there was no direct link between US and British Marconi.

A House of Commons Select Committee was set up in October 1912. Lloyd George and Isaacs that they had dealings in US Marconi. Their economy with the truth came to light later on when Isaacs and Samuel (with Carson and FE Smith as their respective counsel) sued “Le Matin”. The Select Committee reported on strict party lines in June 1913, as did the subsequent Commons vote. Asquith had no personal interest in share dealing but was not censorious. In August 1912 he advised Isaacs not to sue Chesterton’s “Eyewitness”. In January 1913 Asquith rejected Lloyd George’s and Isaacs’ offer of resignation, although he told the King that their behaviour was “lamentable” and “so difficult to defend”.

Asquith told the King that he had not known the full facts until January 1913, and he first mentioned it in a letter on 7 January. The claim by Herbert Samuel in his memoirs that he had told Asquith in June 1912 is not corroborated by any mention in Asquith’s extensive private correspondence.

Asquith replied “certainly not” when Rufus Isaacs suggested he resign for having falsified his age when he joined the Stock Market 34 years earlier. Two months later he appointed him Lord Chief Justice, as was perfectly normal for a former Attorney-General.

The plan was for the whole of Ireland to have what was likened to a “glorified county council”. In September 1911 Carson told a huge audience at Craigavon to be ready to take over the government of Ulster as soon as the Act was passed. Lloyd George was aware that the Leader of the Free Churches was not happy at the prospect of putting Protestants under Catholic rule.

Mainstream Conservative unionism, e.g. Balfour and Lansdowne who was a major Kerry landlord, made little impact on Ulster Unionism. Lord Hugh Cecil made an attempt to address an Orange rally, but it was not a success.

In February 1912, as they walked into the Lords Chamber to listen to the King’s Speech, Bonar Law said “I am afraid I shall have to show myself very vicious, Mr Asquith, this session. I hope you will understand.” Asquith gave a bland answer.

On 6 February 1912, after a long meeting, the Cabinet agreed – suggested by Lord Crewe and “strongly recommended” by Asquith, as he reported to the King – to concede Ulster special treatment if necessary. FE Smith was a Liverpool MP, where the Orange vote was strong at that time, and was born on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. The “Solemn Covenant” was in September 1912.

Bonar Law accused Asquith of a “treacherous conspiracy” and of a crime against the Crown. He told a rally of 15,000 at Blenheim on 29 July “I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster can go in which I should not be prepared to support them.” In May 1912 he told the King that Home Rule would pass unless he sacked the government, and as the Liberals had destroyed the “buffer” of the House of Lords it fell to him to veto the legislation, and whatever happened half the nation would resent his actions.

The Second Passage of the Home Rule and Welsh Disestablishment bills between March and July 1913 was much quicker (“on oiled castors” as Asquith put it) as they were identical to the previous year, and there was no committee stage. Asquith was criticised for neither prosecuting people for sedition nor for negotiating a settlement. But his political technique was to wait for an opportune moment, and at this stage neither the Conservatives nor the Irish nationalists, on whose votes his government depended, were willing to compromise. In July 1912 he spoke in Dublin, saying “Ireland is a nation, not two nations, but one nation”.

Jenkins suggests that Asquith might have extorted concessions from Redmond. The government opposed the Agar-Robartes amendment, proposed in June 1912 by the Liberal MP for St Anstell, which proposed the complete exclusion of Antrim, Armagh, Down and Londonderry. At this stage the Conservatives were demanding the exclusion of all 9 Ulster counties, and preferably hoped to block Home Rule altogether. Asquith insisted on the inviolability of Parliament (whereas in 1913 Bonar Law was toying with the idea of a mass withdrawal from Parliament. Asquith also had a lot of other problems on his plate: Ireland, Marconi, Agadir, strikes, suffragettes, even rumours that the Speaker might be about to resign or the King to abdicate.

In the spring and summer of 1913 the King was heavily lobbied by the Conservatives to force an election in 1914, including one memo from Bonar Law and Lansdowne sent on 31 July at the request of Lord Stamfordham. On 11 August the King had an audience with Asquith and gave him a handwritten letter suggesting an all-party conference on Ireland. Asquith sent two letters in reply. In the first, he stated that the Royal Veto of legislation had “died out” with Queen Anne, that no King had dismissed a Prime Minister since William IV in 1834, and that the King should act solely according to ministerial advice rather than becoming “the football of contending factions”. In his second letter Asquith claimed that for the King to agree to the Conservative demands for a general election would make a mockery of the Parliament Act, that to describe any likely unrest in Ireland as “civil war” would be “a misuse of terms”, and that a conference would only work if the Conservatives first accepted the principle 9italics) of Home Rule.

The King replied on 22 September 1913 with a 1,500 word typed letter, presumably written by Lord Stamfordham, quoting the authority of Bagehot and Erskine May that the King did (italics) have the legal right to dismiss the government or to order a general election. He also argued that the recent removal of the Lords’ veto did (italics) give the King an increased responsibility to protect the constitution and that there ought to be a general election before the Home Rule Bill became law. He also argued that a generation of land reform had made Ireland much quieter than in the days of Parnell, with little clamour for Home Rule from Irish farmers or the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

There were conversations between the various ministers in attendance at Balmoral over the autumn of 1913. Bonar Law was, according to Carson, worried that sticking up for Ulster would be seen as a betrayal by the rest of Unionist Ireland. Churchill claimed that Bonar Law had spoken to him of a possible compromise. Birrell reported (3 October) that there was now less talk of a Conference from the King or the Conservatives. so Asquith wrote to Bonar Law (8 October) proposing informal talks rather than a formal conference.

Loreburn opposed the exclusion of Ulster in Cabinet, then resigned in June 1912. In March 1913, to Asquith’s private derision, he wrote to “The Times” demanding the exclusion of Ulster.

Asquith had talks with Bonar Law at Cherkely (Aitken’s house) on Wednesday 13 October 1913, and claimed to have found him playing bridge (like Monday 12 June 1916). Bonar Law recorded more about personalities than politics, whilst Asquith recorded doubts about links to Carson. The Conservatives were, at this stage, more angry about Welsh Disestablishment than about Irish Home Rule. For the first time Asquith had the impression that Bonar Law might accept Irish Home Rule provided there was some kind of exclusion for Ulster, and provided Lord Lansdowne did not protest too loudly. They had a further meeting on 6 November, at which there was little sign that the previous agreement had ever taken place. Asquith believed he had committed to asking the Cabinet to consider the exclusion of the Six Counties, whereas Bonar Law believed that Asquith had committed himself to such a deal, and that Asquith had therefore cheated him.

On 7 November 1913 Bonar Law wrote to Walter Long hoping that the Nationalists would not agree to the exclusion of Ulster, as it was one of the Conservatives' strongest cards in Britain and it would be hard to refuse a deal. Asquith, however, made little effort to push for a deal. Asquith reported to the Cabinet on 12 November, and on 14 November they met again to discuss the response to Bonar Law. Most of the Cabinet didn’t believe in the Ulster threat and were reluctant to compromise. Samuel’s proposal that the Ulster members be permitted a veto in the Dublin Parliament was rejected. Lloyd George proposed a 5–6 year exclusion of the Six Counties, a period which extended beyond the next two General Elections.

Redmond, who still favoured Home Rule within Home Rule rather than exclusion of the Six Counties, wrote to Asquith on 24 November, poo-pooing the idea of illegal action in Ulster and urged that Bonar Law, not he, be expected to offer a compromise. The Cabinet discussed the letter on 25 November, and agreed not to offer any compromise to Bonar Law but to discuss and offer which he made. Grey proposed that there be only a temporary exclusion of the Six Counties. This shut Redmond up for the moment. However, the King then wrote to Asquith on 30 November urging another meeting. The third Cherkely meeting took place on 9 December (Blake gives the date as 10 December, which is probably an error), but there was no agreement between Asquith and Law. Asquith met Carson at Montagu’s house on 16 December. Asquith sent a friendly letter to Carson on 23 December, proposing that the Ulster members have a veto over Ulster matters in the Irish Parliament. Carson rejected the proposal on 27 December. There was then another Asquith-Carson meeting on 2 January 1914, at which Asquith tried in vain to get Carson to submit a counter-proposal.

With Asquith’s agreement Bonar Law announced at Cardiff on 15 January 1914 that conversations had taken place and had failed. He suggested to Stamfordham that the King write to Aquith urging a General Election. This had been the King’s preference at Balmoral in the autumn but he was now angry at the failure of the negotiations – he liked Asquith personally, thought Grey was doing a good job as Foreign Secretary, and there is no evidence that he liked Bonar Law.

Asquith returned from his holiday in the Antibes on 19 January, and the Cabinet agreed that the 23 December offer to Carson be made public.

Early in 1914 a row about Churchill’s naval estimates briefly drove Ireland from the Cabinet agenda. On 8 December 1913 it was recorded that Churchill, who was not popular with core Liberal opinion, had taken up 2 and three quarter hours of a three and a half hour Cabinet. On 1 January 1914 Lloyd George gave an interview to the “Daily Chronicle” reminding readers of Lord Randolph Churchill’s resignation over naval expenditure. Churchill was abroad at the time, whilst Lloyd George departed for Algeria straight afterwards. Asquith met Churchill on 9 January, just before Churchill departed on holiday.

Asquith saw Churchill and Lloyd George together. He favoured the Admiralty but thought Churchill needlessly provocative. Lloyd George was actually among the more moderate of the opponents of the estimates, whereas Sir John Simon was one of the fiercest (“the Impeccable is the real and only Irreconcilable” Asquith wrote). Simon actually believed that large naval estimates might even be more likely to be passed if Churchill left the Cabinet. Simon, McKenna, Runciman, Beauchamp and Hobhouse signed a letter to Asquith, but Lloyd George and Samuel, although sympathetic, declined to do so.

Asquith let slip that if it came to the point of resignation he would ask for a General Election. His aim was to promote reconciliation between Lloyd George and Churchill (which happened by the end of January) then force the other ministers to accept the situation. On 11 February the Cabinet finally agreed to give Churchill much of what he wanted.

On 22 January 1914 the Cabinet decided to propose that Ulster have a veto on any act of the Dublin Parliament which affected the Protestant counties. The King protested to Asquith that Ulster would never send reps to Dublin anyway. By the time Asquith and Birrell met Redmond, whom Asquith privately called “the Leviathan”, on 2 February he knew that the Tories were planning to amend the Army Act in the House of Lords. Asquith told Redmond of his talk with Bonar Law and Carson, of the Cabinet’s decision, and of the Tories intent. After another meeting with Birrell on 3 February, Redmond sent a vague letter to Asquith on 3 February, stating that he would support Asquith in reaching, by consent, a settlement for an Irish Parliament, an Irish Executive and the integrity of Ireland.

Asquith wrote to the King on 5 February 1914. Esher told Asquith that the King was afraid of him. Over dinner the King warned Asquith that many officers might resign their commissions. Asquith told the King that he must either dismiss the government or pledge not to do so. The King replied that he still had confidence in the government but refused to commit himself further. Jenkins argues that the audience helped to move Asquith from “Home Rule Within Home Rule” which he had urged on Redmond as recently as 2 February and towards a temporary exclusion of the Six Counties.

Lloyd George and Birrell were then tasked with softening up Redmond to accept the temporary exclusion of the Six Counties. Asquith met Redmond on 2 March. Redmond agreed to a three-year exclusion, i.e. until after the next UK General Election; his party would not vote for (italics) this but would abstain provided the Unionists (?Tories) did also. The Cabinet agreed the plan on 4 March (despite the King urging a longer exclusion). To Asquith’s fury, the next morning it leaked to the “Daily News”. Asquith wrote demanding that each minister personally tell him whether he was responsible; all denied it, although Lloyd George suspected Churchill of having leaked it.

On the morning of 6 March 1914 Birrell went to see Redmond to extend exclusion for six years. That afternoon Redmond wrote to Asquith reluctantly accepting the change. Asquith moved the Second Reading of the Home Rule Bill on 9 March 1914; Carson retorted in the debate that it was a “sentence of death with a stay of execution for six years”.

On 11 March 1914 a committee was set up consisting of Churchill, Birrell, Seely and Simon (Crewe was supposed to chair it but in the event was ill) to discuss the UVF, a topic with which Asquith was still not hugely bothered. On 14 March Churchill, who had already ordered a naval deployment to Lamlash, gave an inflammatory speech at Bradford “Let us go forward together, and put these grave matters to the proof”. At Question Time on 16 March Bonar Law accused the government of wanting turn Ulster into “another Poland”. Carson attacked Churchill, accused him of telling “an infamous lie” which when rebuked by the Speaker he replaced by “wilful falsehood”, then stormed out of the Chamber to applause and with a gesture of farewell, in time to catch the boat train from Euston to Liverpool – the assumption being that he was going to Belfast to form a provisional government. The Cabinet Committee reported on 17 March, recommending a deployment of troops into Ulster, including reinforcements from Britain and southern Ireland, and of the 3rd Battle Squadron to a point off the isle of Arran.

Jenkins accuses Paget “a gallant rather than a clear-headed or notably diligent officer” of acting with “crass foolishness”. He later told Asquith that “duty came before all other considerations” whatever his private political views. He left for Dublin the same evening after two days of talks at the War Office. Sir John French had urged that officers refusing to obey orders should be court-martialled, but was told that this was not practicable. Paget talked of Ireland being “ablaze” within 24 hours.

Asquith thought Lord Roberts the prime mover, and that he was “in a dangerous condition of senile frenzy”. Asquith recorded that this would be the third successive Monday of “crisis” in the House. By Wednesday it was clear that the Tories were soft-pedalling in the House as the Curragh Incident looked bad in the eyes of the country, whereas Liberal MPs were riled up.

Asquith drew up the statement in his own handwriting after the Cabinet meeting on 23 March 1914. “The Army Council has been glad to learn that there never has been or never will be any intention of disobeying such lawful orders”.

Margot thought Morley added the peccant paragraphs out of vanity. She thought Seely “the greatest fool of all after Paget”. Asquith ordered them to be struck out as an obvious breach of the principle of civilian control, but Gough had already taken the document to Ireland. The affair served to poison civil-military relations: Gough was given a hero’s welcome by his brother officers, whilst those who had reluctantly prepared to do their duty were regarded with suspicion. However, A.P.Ryan, author of one of the more authoritative works on the incident, wrote that officers approved of Asquith for “his massive common sense”.

Asquith announced a new Army Order in the House of Commons on Friday 27 March (CHECK).

Asquith himself took on the War Office for the time being. At that time a man appointed as a Cabinet Minister was required to resign his seat so that his constituents could approve his appointment at a by-election (Simon advised him that he had technically committed an offence by stepping into the Commons Chamber to announce his own appointment!). In a speech at East Fife he declared that “the Army will hear nothing of politics from me, and in return I expect to hear nothing of politics from the Army”. He was unopposed and returned to the Commons on 14 April.

The King was still lobbying for an indefinite optout for the Six Counties.

At the time of the East Fife by-election Margot wrote “I’ve never known the Tories so vile, so rude and so futile as now”.

Just before Easter 1914 Asquith received a “rather hysterical” letter from the King urging an indefinite optout, with no plebiscite, for the Six Counties. However, Asquith believed he’d already pushed Redmond as far as Redmond would be willing to go.

The Larne gun-running took place on the night of Friday 24 April. Lord Aberdeen urged the arrest of Sir William Adair and Major McCalmont MP. On the advice of Simon, the Cabinet on Monday 27 April decided to prosecute by an obscure legal process called “exhibiting an information” in Dublin. The King was opposed to any such action, as were Birrell and Redmond who thought legal action would inflame the situation further, whilst Carson had been dropping hints of openness to compromise in Commons debates that week. The Cabinet met for the next three mornings before deciding not to prosecute.

On 5 May 1914 Asquith had talks with Bonar Law and Carson at Montagu’s house. They agreed to abandon the committee stage of the Home Rule Bill, instead putting the amendments into an Amending Bill which was to receive Royal Assent the same day as the Home Rule Bill. The contents of the Amending Bill were as yet not agreed. However, Asquith then rejected Conservative demands that the Home Rule Bill be held back until the Amending Bill was ready. Home Rule passed amidst scenes of great rowdiness in the Commons.

The Amending Bill was started in the House of Lords on 23 June 1914 (A bill may be started in either house, depending on the needs of the Parliamentary timetable. The Parliament Act may only be used to force through bills which start in the Commons. In this instance the purpose was to see what the Lords would do anyway). It gave the Six Counties a six year optout if they chose one by plebiscite, the same terms Asquith had offered in March. The Lords amended it to give an indefinite optout, without a plebiscite, to all 9 counties. So there was no option but to renegotiate. Speaker Lowther had urged a conference on 3 May, and the King had done so four times in May and June. By late July Asquith was ready to agree, and even then he preferred to keep the talks informal so as to reduce the risk from a failure of the talks. Ministers were sent out to speak to Nationalist and Ulster leaders with whom they were known to get on.

Asquith wrote of Northcliffe in 1914 “I hate and distrust the fellow and all his works … I know of few men in this world who are responsible for more mischief, and deserve a longer punishment in the next”.

By mid-July it looked as though the partition of Tyrone and Fermanagh might be the price worth paying for an indefinite opt-out. Asquith broached this to the King on 16 July, referring to him in a letter as “the Royal person” but also acknowledging that he had made the “really good suggestion” that the Speaker preside. He declined the King’s suggestion that Balfour be involved, thinking him “a real wrecker” on this issue. Asquith & Lloyd George, Redmond & Dillon, Carson & Craig, Bonar Law & Lansdowne. Asquith wrote to Crewe claiming that the Irish preferred Lloyd George to him, although this was in fact Asquith’s decision. The conference met between 21 and 24 July.

Robert Blake, Bonar law’s biographer, later wrote that the Conservatives only attended the conference in deference to the King’s wishes. Asquith called County Tyrone “the most damnable creation of the perverted ingenuity of man”. Redmond and Carson each wanted the whole of Tyrone and refused to compromise. After the conference broke up in failure, the King saw each member in turn, telling Redmond that he had come to favour Home Rule.

There was then a meeting at 10, Downing Street with Asquith, Redmond, Birrell, Redmond and Dillon. The Irish Nationalist leaders were told that there was now little alternative than to go for indefinite exclusion in the Amending Bill.

The Howth gun-running took place at the weekend . Asquith disapproved of the calling out of troops (3 Irishmen were killed and 38 wounded), and was very concerned at the poor quality of the Dublin Castle administration. The Amending Bill was postponed from Tuesday 28 April to Thursday 30 April to give the Irish Nationalist MPs a chance to cool off, although Asquith dismissed as “idiotic” the Chief Whip’s proposal to put it back into the following week, as this would create the impression the government were doing nothing. By this time it was becoming clear that war was imminent on the continent, although not yet that the UK would be involved.

Bonar Law invited Asquith to his house by car to agree postponement of the Second Reading of the Amending Bill. After consulting Lloyd George, Grey and Redmond, Asquith agreed. Home Rule passed, but was suspended for the duration of the war.

xxxx

“Memories and Reflections” appeared posthumously in two volumes in 1928.

In later life Asquith came to be seen as “The Last of the Romans”, a martyr to the cause of principle in politics, even by young men like Harold Nicolson who were not supporters of free trade. This amused some who had known him: Lord Haldane scoffed that the Asquiths had come to be revered like “the Holy Family”. Asquith’s daughter Violet kept this memory alive for many decades afterwards.

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• Pope-Hennessy, James (1955). Lord Crewe 1858–1945: The Likeness of a Liberal. London: Constable & Co. OCLC 917741.
• Popplewell, Oliver (2014). The Prime Minister and His Mistress. Raleigh, US: Lulu Press. ISBN 978-1-4834-1429-4.
• Pound, Reginald; Harmsworth, Geoffrey (1959). Northcliffe. London: Cassell. OCLC 655815144.
• Ramsden, John (1978). A History of the Conservative Party – The Age of Balfour and Baldwin: 1902–1940. London: Longman. ISBN 978-0-582-50714-2.
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Further reading

• Asquith, H. H. (1918). Occasional Addresses 1893–1916. London: Macmillan and Co. OCLC 4086237.
• Asquith, H. H. (1926). Fifty Years of Parliament Volume 1. London: Cassell & Co. OCLC 15982.
• Asquith, H. H. (1926). Fifty Years of Parliament Volume 2. London: Cassell & Co. OCLC 15982.
• Jeffery, Keith (2006). Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: A Political Soldier. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-820358-2.
• Jenkins, Roy (1998). The Chancellors. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-73057-7.

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Earl of Oxford
• Bodleian Library catalogue record (finding aid) of H.H. Asquith's private papers
• Bodleian Library catalogue record (finding aid) of Margot Asquith's private papers
• Bodleian Library catalogue record (finding aid) of Lady Violet Bonham Carter's private papers
• Catalogue record of items related to Asquith and Women's Suffrage held at The Women's Library at the Library of the London School of Economics
• Extended entry in the 1937 Dictionary of National Biography (Lundy, Darryl. "Asquith, Herbert Henry, first Earl of Oxford and Asquith 1852–1928". The Peerage.)
• Asquith biography from BBC History
• Asquith entry in Encyclopædia Britannica
• Blue plaque to Asquith on his house in Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Scheme
• Portraits of Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• "Archival material relating to H.H. Asquith as Chancellor and peacetime Prime Minister". UK National Archives.
• Works by or about Herbert Henry Asquith at the Internet Archive
• Works by H.H. Asquith as Chancellor and peacetime Prime Minister at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

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