Journal of Issue 36 / Autumn 2002 / £4.00
Liberal DemocratHISTORY
One Liberal’s war David Dutton One Liberal’s war Richard Durning Holt and Liberal politics 1914–18 Tom Dale and Robert Ingham The Lord Chancellor who never was Biography of Norman Birkett R. Ian Elder The Young Scots Society A lost Liberal legion Adrian Slade What might have been Interview with John Pardoe Larry Iles and Robert Ingham The first woman Liberal MP Biography of Margaret Wintringham Liberal Democrat History Group Issue 36: Autumn 2002 Journal of Liberal Democrat History The Journal of Liberal Democrat History is published quarterly by the Liberal Democrat History Group. 3 One Liberal’s war ISSN 1463-6557 Editor: Duncan Brack Richard Durning Holt and Liberal politics 1914–18; by David Dutton Deputy Editor: Sarah Taft Assistant Editor: Alison Smith Biographies Editor: Robert Ingham 9 The Lord Chancellor who never was Reviews Editor: Sam Crooks
Tom Dale and Robert Ingham examine the career of the leading Liberal lawyer Patrons Norman Birkett (1883–1962) Dr Eugenio Biagini; Professor Michael Freeden; Professor Earl Russell; Professor John Vincent 13 The Young Scots Society Editorial Board A lost Liberal legion remembered by R. Ian Elder Dr Malcolm Baines; Dr Roy Douglas; Dr Barry Doyle; Dr David Dutton; Professor David Gowland; Dr Richard Grayson; Dr Michael Hart; 16 What might have been Peter Hellyer; Ian Hunter; Dr J. Graham Jones; Tony Little; Professor Ian Machin; Dr Mark Pack; Adrian Slade looks back with John PardoePardoe, Liberal MP for North Cornwall, 1966–79 Dr John Powell; Iain Sharpe 19 The first woman Liberal MP Editorial/Correspondence Contributions to the Journal – letters, articles, Larry Iles and Robert Ingham take a look at the life and political career of Margaret and book reviews – are invited. The Journal is a Wintringham (1879–1955) refereed publication; all articles submitted will be reviewed. Contributions should be sent to:
Duncan Brack (Editor) 22 Letters and Queries 38 Salford Road, London SW2 4BQ email: [email protected] The 1945 election; Louis Kossuth’s visit to England, 1859; correction All articles copyright © their authors.
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The Liberal Democrat History Group promotes the discussion and research of historical topics Cover design concept: Lynne Featherstone relating to the histories of the Liberal Democrats, Liberal Party, and SDP, and of Liberalism. The Group organises discussion meetings and produces the Journal and other occasional publications. Published by the Liberal Democrat History Group, For more information, including details of publications, back issues of the Journal, tape records of c/o 38 Salford Road, London SW2 4BQ meetings and archive and other research sources, see our web site at: www.liberalhistory.org.ukwww.liberalhistory.org.uk. Printed by Kall-Kwik, Hon President: Earl Russell 426 Chiswick High Road, London W4 5TF Chair: Tony Little September 2002
2 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 Liberals and the Great War The First World War tore the Liberal Party apart. David Dutton looks at how one Liberal MP lived through the conflict. OneOne Liberal’sLiberal’s warwar Richard Durning Holt and Liberal politics 1914–18
iberalism tore its heart out between Liberalism, as a laissez-faire political philosophy, and in a private agony about true proved to be intellectually defenceless in the face of and false Liberals, right and wrong Liber- the necessary wartime encroachments of a ‘L alism.’ At one level it is difficult to argue with collectivist state does scant justice to the way in Michael Bentley’s verdict. The Liberal Party, which which Liberalism had already abandoned much of entered the First World War in August under its nineteenth century outlook long before war the leadership of Herbert Asquith with more than broke out. It ignores, in fact, the ascendancy which eight continuous and distinguished years in govern- the ideas of the ‘New Liberalism’ had come to oc- ment behind it, left the conflict deeply divided and cupy from the s onwards. For Martin Pugh, about to be humiliated in the Coupon election of therefore, Liberalism faced no insuperable chal- December , held just weeks after the armistice lenges in the social and economic spheres between came into force. That election saw the independent and . Only, he argues, in the realms of po- party, still headed by Asquith, reduced to less than litical and legal issues do such arguments carry thirty MPs. any conviction. George Bernstein goes further, ar- Even so, the precise impact upon the Liberal guing that Liberalism in the constituencies reveals Party of four years of unprecedentedly intense con- above all the party’s flexibility and capacity to flict, the first total war in British experience, remains adapt. Away from Westminster the typical Liberal a matter of considerable academic controversy. could readily accept the emergency measures Geoffrey Searle has identified three broad explana- which the government was obliged to enact. tions of what happened. Some historians have fo- Part of the problem derives from a tendency to cused on the accidents of history whereby key indi- treat Liberalism and the Liberal Party as a single en- viduals – usually Lloyd George or Asquith and their tity, capable of responding consistently and uni- followers, according to taste – contributed by their formly to the trials of world war. But the party had mistakes and misjudgements to their party’s decline. always been a broad church. Liberals responded to Others attach the greatest importance to the proc- the conflict in a huge range of ways and ‘what esses of social change, begun or accelerated by the caused the Liberal Party to divide were the different war, which created a system of class-based politics in reactions of its members to the strains of war’. What which Liberalism found itself increasingly out- follows is an attempt to trace the wartime experi- flanked by an advancing Labour Party. Finally, there ence of one backbench Liberal MP for whom the are those who stress the inability of Liberalism as an war did indeed create a crisis of values and ideals intellectual creed to cope with the demands of mo- with which he was unable to cope. dem warfare. The last offers the most tantalising line Richard Durning Holt was born in into one of enquiry. ‘It was their principles’, asserts Kenneth of Liverpool’s richest and most respected mercantile Morgan, ‘which the very fact of total war with the families. His father Robert was a cotton broker, unbridled collectivism and the “jingo” passions leader of the Liberal Party on the Liverpool council which it unleashed, appeared to undermine.’ In the and the city’s first Lord Mayor in –. The Holts memorable phrase of Trevor Wilson, the war was like were prominent Unitarians who made substantial a ‘rampant’ omnibus which, out of control, mounted philanthropic contributions to their city. the pavement and ran over an unsuspecting pedes- Richard was educated at Winchester and New trian. The victim was the British Liberal Party. College, Oxford. After two unsuccessful attempts to Few, however, now accept Wilson’s analysis secure election for the West Derby division of Liver- without considerable qualifications. The idea that pool he was elected to parliament as the Liberal
Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 3 deeply regret it’. Holt himself, and presumably at least some of those who acted with him at this time, represented a continuing strand of laissez-faire Lib- eralism which was out of sympathy with much that the government had done in the years since . His prob- lems would be greatly exacerbated by the coming of European war. That said, Holt, along with the vast majority of the Parliamentary Liberal Party, had little difficulty in accepting the British declaration of war. The crucial factor was Germany’s violation of Bel- gian neutrality which enabled the gov- ernment to present British participation as a moral issue rather than a question of realpolitik. Before the Belgian issue arose, it was another matter. As Holt wrote on August: ‘it is impossible to believe that a Liberal government can be guilty of the crime of dragging us into this con- flict in which we are in no way inter- ested’. A week later his mood had Richard Durning Holt (1868–1941) changed dramatically:
I had thought we might and should member for the Northumberland con- ty’s tolerance for social and economic have kept out of the war but when stituency of Hexham following a by- change’. Possibly, indeed, ‘the budget Germany decided on an unprovoked election in March . Amidst the vast debacle of marked the end of the attack upon Belgium, whose neutral- array of Liberal backbenchers elected in New Liberalism’. ity Germany equally with ourselves the landslide general election victory of Recent research, however, has had guaranteed, it seemed impossible January , Holt made little impact stressed the fluid composition of the for us to stand by. in the House of Commons until Holt Cave, whose numbers fluctuated shortly before the outbreak of the First during the brief weeks of its existence In reality the public justification of World War. Then, in the spring of , between fifteen and sixty members. Ac- Britain’s involvement was almost the he led the opposition of a group of Lib- cording to Ian Packer, it was ‘by no mirror image of the motivation which eral MPs to Lloyd George’s budget of means a straightforward expression of had actually guided the key figures of that year, the first £ million budget anti-progressive sentiments’ but rather Asquith’s cabinet. It was a remarkably in British history. ‘a disparate group of MPs whose mem- successful example of the government’s Historians have disputed the signifi- bership and grievances varied enor- skills of policy presentation. cance of the so-called ‘Holt Cave’. It mously’. Furthermore, Packer has For the time being Holt acted as a was once suggested that the actions of shown that the government’s conces- loyal and largely unquestioning sup- Holt and his colleagues represented a sions had more to do with procedural porter of the war effort, encouraging significant body of opposition to the difficulties of its own creation than voluntary enlistment and turning his general progressive direction of gov- with pressure applied by Holt and his family home in Liverpool into a tem- ernment policy, including Lloyd supporters. So the Cave may have been porary hospital. By , however, his George’s land campaign. Holt led a less significant for the long-term evolu- attitude began to change. Holt’s diary deputation of between forty and fifty tion of the Liberal Party than was once contains increasingly regular and disil- MPs which met Asquith on June. thought. That said, Holt’s own words lusioned references to the country’s The Prime Minister’s failure to satisfy are difficult to ignore. The Cave, he said, mounting casualty lists. But the real the rebels resulted in a letter to The was ‘a combined remonstrance by busi- turning point came with the forma- Times on June, which Asquith found ness men and some survivors of the tion of a coalition government in May. ‘a very able document’. The fact that Cobden-Bright school of thought ‘Liberal opinion is dissatisfied’, noted the Cave’s efforts ended with the gov- against the ill-considered and socialistic Holt, ‘and many Liberal members in- ernment withdrawing some of its pro- tendencies of the Government finance’. cluding [myself] are vexed and suspi- posals and agreeing to halve the pro- The government had ‘certainly trav- cious.’ His belief grew that ‘it is the posed increase in income tax ‘clearly elled a long way from the old Liberal result of a dirty intrigue’ and he com- defined the limits of [the Liberal] Par- principle of “retrenchment” and I mented on serious ‘anxiety as to future
4 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 policy’. By June he was associated with mons even though ‘the opponents Liberals from the contaminating con- a small group of Liberal MPs led by Sir made out a case’. More significantly straints of association with an alien po- Charles Nicholson which included Leif for Holt, his stand over compulsion be- litical philosophy. He was now com- Jones, Russell Rea and Sir Thomas gan the process which would eventu- pletely disillusioned with Lloyd George Whittaker, whose aim was to give the ally sever his relationship with his seat – ‘L.G. has behaved scandalously and government ‘a Liberal pull whenever at Hexham. The chairman of the con- the section of the Liberals he takes with possible’. Reginald McKenna’s au- stituency Liberal Association fired the him are certainly not men conspicuous tumn budget was also a cause for con- first shot across the MP’s bows. Should for their character’. The new Prime cern since it ‘impose[d] customs duties opposition to the Military Service Bill Minister’s views seemed to have turned without corresponding excise. A curious be carried to such extremes as to cause full circle from pre-war days when he suggestion from a Free Trade Ch. of a general election, he warned, ‘the Lib- had been a standard-bearer of Radical Exchequer against which I voted eral Party in the Hexham Division Liberalism: ‘Think of “Limehouse” and steadily.’ By the end of the year the would not only suffer defeat but disas- the [People’s] Budget’. Holt now campaign for military conscription ter’. Opinion amongst the general pub- looked to Asquith, the deposed Liberal was becoming irresistible. For purist lic was not in line with Holt and the premier, to fill the role he had assigned Liberals such as Holt the year’s devel- most important thing was to give the to Simon a year earlier. Once again, he opments were of a kind – compulsion Prime Minister ‘all possible support’. would be largely disappointed. That was the direct result of coalition and Holt hoped that a weekend spent in disappointment moved him towards as- graphically illustrated the dire conse- Hexham in late February had ‘allayed sociation with some strange bedfellows. quence which inevitably followed the anxiety which my independence In , with prospects of outright from the prostitution of Liberal prin- in Parliament had caused’. But he military victory against Germany and ciples. He denied unreservedly the was over-optimistic. When the gov- her allies apparently receding, war wea- state’s right to oblige a man to bear ernment sought to widen conscrip- riness became a characteristic feature of arms against his will. tion, Holt moved the rejection of their a much wider section of political opin- At the beginning of an impor- bill. By the summer of he was ion than hitherto. Holt bitterly resented tant Rubicon was crossed when the giving serious thought to the idea of a Lloyd George’s determined pursuit of government introduced the first mili- negotiated peace, and he provided fi- the ‘knockout blow’ as both unrealistic tary service bill. Holt was prominent nancial backing when a new weekly and unacceptable in terms of the losses among the bill’s opponents and looked journal, Common Sense, whose think- which its unlikely achievement would for a lead from Sir John Simon who ing was close to that of the Union of entail. But the reluctance of Asquith to now resigned as Home Secretary over Democratic Control, was launched in come out as the leader of a principled this issue. ‘There are all the elements of October. A correspondent warned of party of opposition left him increas- a first rate Liberal Party,’ insisted Holt, mounting dissatisfaction in the con- ingly frustrated. Holt’s reaction to the ‘and for months we have only wanted stituency which, he said, had begun debate on the government’s suppres- a leader.’ By February Simon had be- with Holt’s opposition to the sion of foreign editions of the Nation in come chairman of a small group of budget. But with increasing intensity April was typical: ‘a division was staved those MPs who opposed conscription, Holt came to feel that the war was be- off by the loquacity of those who are a group that was interesting in the way ing used to justify unacceptable meas- afraid of breaking the Govt. and having in which it showed the distinction be- ures of encroachment by the state. ‘All to face a general election’. Not sur- tween radical Liberals and Labour the old principles of the Liberal Party prisingly, Holt was very enthusiastic members beginning to blur. Holt have been virtually abandoned by its about the publication in the Daily Tel- found himself a committee member leaders’, he complained, ‘even Free egraph at the end of the year of the fa- alongside J. H. Thomas, soon to be- Trade … The betrayal has been cruel. mous letter from the former Unionist come General Secretary of the Na- War seems to arouse so many bad pas- Foreign Secretary, the Marquess of tional Union of Railwaymen, and a sions that Liberalism cannot live in its Lansdowne, advocating a negotiated future Labour cabinet minister. Yet atmosphere.’ One area of particular peace. He was among those who signed Simon never emerged as the effective concern to him was the merchant an address of thanks to Lansdowne in leader of true Liberalism in the way navy. To Walter Runciman, the Presi- recognition of his contribution to the that Holt had hoped. The majority of dent of the Board of Trade, he com- cause of peace. In a bizarre piece of anti-conscriptionists were to the left plained that ‘the mercantile marine speculation the journalist F.W. Hirst of Simon in general political terms will step by step become controlled drew up the details of a possible alter- and had not hitherto been his natural entirely by the Government … native government. The Unionist allies. He regarded some of his new whereas, as you know, I regard with in- Lansdowne as Prime Minister would supporters as ‘cranks’. tense dislike the interference with the be flanked by Holt at the Exchequer The fight against conscription was a freedom of individuals’. and socialists Ramsay MacDonald and forlorn one and Holt was disappointed Holt shed no tears when the first Philip Snowden at the Home Office when the government carried its bill by coalition government fell in December. and Ministry of Labour respectively. votes to in the House of Com- In his view this development freed true Holt was particularly attracted by
Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 5 Lansdowne’s declaration that Britain as to help us in that direction. I fear supporters was held at the Essex Hall in should have no long-term aim to de- that the publication of your letter will February. But in the atmosphere of the prive Germany of ‘her place among the act as a serious set-back to those ef- time it was only too easy, if unfair, for great commercial communities of the forts. I do not think that at the extreme nationalists such as the news- world’. He set out his position in a let- present time we could count on one- paper magnate, Lord Northcliffe, to ter to his local constituency newspaper: third of the usual body of workers in dub Holt and those who thought like ‘Those who, like myself, have been and the constituency and, of those, few him as ‘pro-German’. are convinced Free Traders and humble would be enthusiasts. Holt’s other great problem at this followers of Cobden, Bright and time was that he and those who By the end of January he had Gladstone accept this proposition as thought like him lacked the leadership agreed with the officers of the Hexham one necessary to our own material of a nationally respected figure. He was Liberal Party that he would seek a new prosperity. Germany’s prosperity and now keen to ‘organise the overthrow of constituency at the next election, al- indeed the prosperity of any country the present government. Nothing good though no formal announcement was adds to instead of detracting from ours.’ for the country can result from govern- made until later in the year: ‘we are all There was no reason, he argued, why an ment by a gang of incompetent scoun- agreed that it is worse than useless from attempt should not be made, as drels – or even competent ones’. everybody’s point of view that I should Lansdowne suggested, to bring peace to Asquith remained the obvious standard stand if defeat is certain’. the world and free it from its rapidly in- bearer of independent Liberalism and Holt derived momentary encour- creasing burden of misery. But this Holt believed ‘he ought to be pushed agement from Lloyd George’s famous meant abandoning the ‘knock-out into it. L.G. is a public danger and speech to the Trades Union Congress blow’ policy of ‘the Prime Minister and A[squith], tho’ he has many faults, is far on January, in which the Prime Min- his present entourage’. preferable particularly if he can be kept ister seemed to go a considerable way By December Holt was involved in in good company’. Holt made a per- towards accepting the goal of a peace moves to organise an effective parlia- sonal appeal to the former premier to without victors or vanquished as advo- mentary opposition – ‘intelligent, patri- take the lead, especially in opposition to cated by the American President, otic and active’ – despite Asquith’s re- any further extension of conscription Woodrow Wilson. ‘It appears to me that luctance to lead it. In doing so, he was which would inevitably have a damag- he has accepted the opinions and policy well aware that his actions might have ing impact upon the domestic which I have advocated for months and fatal consequences for his position at economy. ‘L.G. is ruining the country years past.’ In general, however, he Hexham. ‘We are on the verge of start- and, whether we can stop him or not, continued to find himself at odds with ing a regular Liberal opposition in Par- do let us try.’ But Asquith held back, the government’s conduct of the war. liament’, he informed his constituency partly out of a patriotic wish to see the Indeed, his severance from Hexham party chairman, ‘in which I shall take war reach a successful conclusion and served if anything to embolden his op- part. You, in the constituencies, will partly because he realised that he was position. On February he moved a have to decide whether you will sup- not well placed to resume the premier- resolution in the Commons condemn- port that opposition or a Conservative ship himself should Lloyd George fall ing the terms of an allied statement is- with dabs of Socialism Government.’ from grace. sued by the Supreme War Council at Holt’s problem, however, was that the Holt formally resigned from his Ver sailles a week earlier and calling majority of local Liberals were still Hexham seat in July and in late Octo- upon the government to keep open the ready to give Lloyd George and his ber, with help from the Whip’s Office, possibility of negotiations for a diplo- government the benefit of the doubt which was still under Asquithian con- matic settlement. He questioned and he readily agreed that, should it be trol and anxious at this stage to mini- whether a military solution was really the wish of the Hexham Association to mise party divisions, was selected as the only option and drew attention to choose another candidate for the next Liberal candidate for the Lancashire Lloyd George’s inconsistency in now election, he would be ‘ready to make constituency of Eccles. The election advocating once more the military de- the change as easy as possible for you when it came was held in circum- struction of Germany when only a and for my successor’. Deprived of stances which could not have been en- month earlier he had seemed ready to the opportunity to explain himself to a visaged in the spring and early sum- envisage a more conciliatory conclu- public meeting of his constituents, Holt mer of when Germany came as sion to the war. A fortnight later he set out his views in a letter to a local near as at any time since to a accused Foreign Secretary Arthur newspaper. It was to no avail, as his con- military breakthrough on the Western Balfour of deliberately misinterpreting stituency chairman made clear: Front. With stunning rapidity the tide the peace feelers emanating from the was turned and by the autumn the war Some of us have been doing our very Central Powers. In the pages of Com- machine of the Central Powers was in best to improve the relationships be- mon Sense Holt called for a coalition of a state of collapse. This meant that the tween yourself and your constituents all those who rejected the decimation election was held in the euphoric at- and were hopeful that the political of Germany as a policy objective, and mosphere created by sudden and un- situation would change in such a way an important meeting of Lansdowne’s expected victory. Holt began his cam-
6 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 paign optimistically enough. ‘Our present position is that [the members of the Coalition] are not trustworthy people and their election a very dirty trick and this argument seems popu- lar.’ Rapidly, however, his mood changed and by polling day he was an- ticipating defeat at the hands of his Conservative opponent. But the result, both in Eccles itself and nationally, was far worse than Holt had anticipated:
What an event the election is! Prac- tically everybody who can be reck- oned a staunch Liberal wiped out and not one left who can be relied upon to make a proper exposition of Liberal principles if called upon to do so. It is really comical – but it is a tragedy too. In Eccles Holt trailed his Tory oppo- nent by more than , votes. He had no answer to the tide of militant nationalism which dominated the first months of the peace. Interestingly, his disillusionment with Asquith was now so great that he welcomed the latter’s defeat at East Fife. ‘There is a better chance of restoring things without him than with him.’ Though there came to be an in- tensely personal element in Holt’s de- testation of Lloyd George, it is difficult not to conclude that his wartime prob- lems were at heart ideological. He had managed to support Britain’s entry into the European conflict and he remained As a character sketch written in the early under the stimulus of free trade and convinced throughout the conflict that s put it, ‘he seems to hold that the open competition. certain basic war aims, such as the res- golden age is not before us but behind us Of course, Holt’s experience was that of toration of Belgian neutrality, needed and that it was at its most roseate be- an individual. But it is instructive to note to be secured. But he was not prepared tween and ’. Even in the the fortunes of those with whom the to wage war in the name of liberal de- darkest days of military danger Holt re- war brought him into contact and co- mocracy if the means of doing so in- mained keen to remind the country of operation. The range of Holt’s associates volved the destruction of those very the underlying importance of traditional suggested a certain intellectual confu- values which Britain had set out to de- Liberal virtues: sion on his part. His temporary alliance fend. He would have endorsed the Our great danger in the future would with Lansdowne could be taken no fur- words of W.L. Williams, MP for come not from an enemy who, what- ther even though he shared with the Carmarthen, who warned the House ever happened, would have been ter- Unionist peer a reactionary dislike of of Commons in July that: ribly punished and weakened, but most of the changes occasioned by the it would be tragedy worse than war if, from oppressive taxation at home and war. The Conservative Party of the in- in order to win the War, England ceased from Government control, which, ter-war years with its ongoing flirtation to be the beacon of freedom and liberty like a bad drug habit, grew upon the with protective tariffs offered no attrac- which she has been in the past. people who indulged in it. We could tion to a Free Trade Liberal of Holt’s only cut the danger by making the stamp. Yet he could probably have ac- Holt’s Liberalism was deeply entrenched greatest possible use of the means of commodated himself easily enough in the values of the nineteenth century. production, and we could only reach among a later generation of Conserva- Upon him at least the tenets of the New our maximum of industrial efficiency tives. Some of his pronouncements Liberalism had made little if any impact.
Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 7 display a positively Thatcherite tone: cised his aunt and uncle, Sidney and World War in British History (London, 1995), Beatrice Webb, for their ‘great idea of p.15. The habit of looking to the State for 7 G. L. Bernstein, ‘Yorkshire Liberalism during the spending money so as to please the help instead of trusting to its own First World War’, Historical Journal 32 (1989), working classes. Not to my idea a very p.126. hard work and ability saps the vitality high-minded type of political opinion.’ 8 E. David, ‘The Liberal Party Divided, of any industry and produces ineffi- 1916-1918’, Historical Journal 13 (1970), p.53l. Holt therefore served out the re- ciency. Exposure to competition is 9 M. and E. Brock (eds), H.H. Asquith: Letters to mainder of his career within the Liberal Venetia Stanley (Oxford, pub. end., 1985), p.89 the best security that an industry will 10 I. Packer, ‘The Liberal Cave and the 1914 ranks. He sought re-election to parlia- be thoroughly efficient. Budget’, English Historical Review, 442 (1996), ment on no less than five further occa- pp.62l, 628. Lansdowne, whose call for a negotiated sions between and , all with- 11 B. B. Gilbert, ‘David Lloyd George: The Reform peace Holt regarded as a rare and unex- out success. But the decade after the of British Landholding and the Budget of 1914’, pected voice of sanity, found himself end of the Great War saw Holt bewil- Historical Journal, 21 (1978), p.141. 12 Liverpool Record Office, Richard Durning Holt largely ostracised among his Conserva- dered and disheartened, especially once diary 19 July 1914. tive colleagues. Never again did he hold Lloyd George had been restored to the 13 Ibid., 2 Aug. 1914. office in government or party. party’s hierarchy. He was encumbered 14 Ibid., 9 Aug. 1914. 15 Ibid., 30 May 1915. Of more significance were Holt’s as- by pre-war doctrines which seemed to 16 Ibid., 6 June 1915. sociates on the radical left. He clearly have less and less relevance to the prob- 17 Ibid., 20 June 1915. felt some misgivings about some of the lems of the post-war world. He never 18 Ibid., 24 Oct. 1915. 19 Bodleian Library, Oxford, Simon MSS, 52 fos company which the war obliged him to reconciled himself to Lloyd George’s 43–44, Holt to Simon, 2 January 1916. keep. ‘Our fellow guests (and indeed leadership, nor after to the sort of 20 T. Wilson (ed.), The Political Diaries of C. P. our hosts) if not pro-German are too interventionist Liberalism which the Scott 1911–1928 (London, 1970), p.173 anti-English for my taste,’ he noted in Welshman espoused. But he deter- 21 Holt diary, 9 Jan. 1916. 22 Holt MSS, 920 DUR 14/27/211, Herbert Lees February after a dinner with mined to fight his corner, however un- to Holt 8 Jan. 1916. Leonard Courtney, former Liberal MP profitably, from within. 23 Holt diary, 12 March 1916. and Deputy Speaker of the House of In practice, he remained a Liberal 24 Holt MSS, 920 DUR 14/27/184, J. A. Iveson to Holt 5 July 1916. Commons, at which he was joined by only because there was nowhere else to 25 Holt diary, 6 Aug. 1916 C. P. Trevelyan, F. W. Hirst and Labour’s go. As Holt himself put it in : ‘diffi- 26 University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Runciman Ramsay MacDonald. But such figures cult and even hopeless as the position is, MSS 149, Holt to Runciman 2 Nov. 1916 27 Holt diary, 10 Dec. 1916 shared Holt’s doubts about the way in there is no place for some of us except 28 Ibid. which the British war effort was being in a Liberal Party. The Tories and the 29 Ibid., 22 April 1917. conducted and matched his commit- Labour are equally impossible.’ 30 M. Bentley, The Liberal Mind 1914 – 1929 ment to free trade, freedom of con- Pressed to stand again for parliament in (Cambridge, 1977), p.62. 31 Holt MSS, 920 DUR 14/27/216, Holt to Editor, science, freedom of the press and the , Holt chose instead to concentrate Hexham Courant n.d. but Dec.1917. voluntary principle of recruitment. on his business career, becoming chair- 32 Ibid., 920 14/27/216, Holt to H. Lees 8 Dec. Many of Holt’s wartime collaborators man of Elder Dempster Shipping Lines 1917. 33 Ibid., H. Lees to Holt 11 Dec. 1917. experienced like him serious disagree- and of Martin’s Bank. But he remained 34 Ibid., 920 DUR 14/27/218, Holt to H. Lees 7 ments with their constituency parties. faithful to those Gladstonian principles Jan. 1918. Some such as E. T. John, Josiah Wedg- of reduced government expenditure 35 Ibid. 36 S. Harris, Out of Control: British Foreign Policy wood, R. L. Outhwaite and Charles and low taxation in which he had al- and the Union of Democratic Control, 1914– Trevelyan reacted to this situation by ways believed. He died in Liverpool on 1918 (Hull, 1996), p. 213. severing their existing party links and March . 37 Ibid., p. 215. fighting the election as independents or 38 Simon MSS, 55 fo. 39, Holt to J. Simon 9 March 1918. supporters of the Independent Labour David Dutton is Reader in History at the 39 Holt diary, 5 May 1918 Party. Others, including Sydney Arnold, University of Liverpool and Visiting Profes- 40 Holt MSS, 920 DUR 14/27/14, Holt to H. Edward Hemmerde, Joseph King and R. sor in Humanities at Bolton Institute. He is Asquith 5 April 1918. 41 Simon MSS, 55 fo. 68, Holt to J. Simon 5 April C. Lambert, stayed with Liberalism dur- currently working on a history of the Liberal 1918. ing the disaster of but sooner or Party in the twentieth century. 42 Runciman MSS, 169, Holt to W. Runciman 1 later transferred their allegiance to the Dec. 1918. 1 M. Bentley, The Climax of Liberal Politics (Lon- 43 Ibid., 171, Holt to W. Runciman 29 Dec. 1918. Labour Party. Such men came to see in 44 Ibid. don, 1987), p.124. Labour’s moderate socialism the vehicle 45 House of Commons Debates, 5th Series, vol. 2 G. R. Searle, The Liberal Party: Triumph and for those radical aspirations which had Disintegration, 1886–1929 (Houndmills, 1992), lxxiii, col. 122. 46 Financial Times 22 April 1931. once attracted them to Liberalism. Such p.122. 47 Manchester Guardian 4 May 1918. a path offered no temptations for Holt. 3 K. O. Morgan, The Age of Lloyd George (Lon- don, 1978), p.58. 48 Daily Telegraph 6 Nov. 1928. 49 Holt diary, 11 Feb. 1917. In the last year of the war he wrote con- 4T. Wilson, The Downfall of the Liberal Party 50 M. Pugh, The Making of Modern British Politics temptuously of Liberals who were ‘drift- 1914–1935 (London, 1966), p.18 5 See, in particular, P. F. Clarke, Lancashire and 1867-1939 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 216–17. ing to the Labour Party, bitten with the 51 Holt diary, 2 Jan. 1918. the New Liberalism (Cambridge, 1971). 52 Ibid., 12 March 1903. idea of state interference’. He was after 6 M. Pugh, ‘Domestic Politics’ in S. Constantine, all the same man who had once criti- M. W. Kirby and M. B. Rose (eds), The First 53 Ibid., 24 Oct. 1926.
8 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 Biography Tom Dale and Robert Ingham examine the career of the leading Liberal lawyer Norman Birkett (1883–1962). TheThe LordLord ChancellorChancellor whowho nevernever waswas
orman Birkett was one of the most Theological final examination. Having followed his prominent Liberal barristers in the first father into the Liberal Party and campaigned in the N half of the th century and, in other po- general election, Birkett became a leading fig- litical climates, would probably have become Lord ure in the Cambridge Union, being elected Presi- Chancellor, the most senior legal appointment in the dent in . country. Once he had graduated, Birkett had second Born in Ulverston-in-Furness on September thoughts about entering the Wesleyan Ministry and, , William Norman Birkett spent the first after long discussions about his future, decided to twenty-five years of his life in Ulverston. His father, become a lawyer and read for the Bar. He enrolled at Thomas, was a successful draper who was not only a the Inner Temple and obtained his law degree in leading Liberal in the North Lonsdale constituency . He was also invited to be the Liberal parlia- and Chairman of the local council but also a promi- mentary candidate for Cambridge – an invitation he nent member of the local Wesleyan Church. His refused as he had no income. Before being called to mother Agnes, neé Tyson, was the daughter of a local the Bar, he was invited to become Private Secretary butcher. Norman Birkett was the fourth of five chil- to George Cadbury Junior at Bourneville where he dren, and the third son, but he had no memory of his became involved with Cadbury’s philanthropic mother, who died of tuberculosis in April . In work in Birmingham for the next two years. In No- Thomas Birkett married Agnes Dodding, who vember he assisted George Cadbury’s election lived in Ulverston as a companion to a widowed as a Liberal member of Birmingham City Council lady, and who bore him another daughter. She died and started the Selly Oak Branch of the League of in and Thomas Birkett died twelve years later, Young Liberals. leaving the family firm in the hands of his eldest In June Norman Birkett was called to the daughter, Edith. Bar and, after discussions with Stanley Buckmaster Norman Birkett was a delicate child who inher- (later a Liberal Lord Chancellor), he was taken into ited his father’s red hair, and the schoolboy nick- the Chambers of John Hurst, a leading barrister in names ‘carrots’ and ‘coppernob’. He was educated at the Midlands Circuit. At the same time, he was cho- Ulverston’s Wesleyan Day School and the Higher sen as the prospective Liberal candidate for North Grade School at Barrow. In Birkett began an Birmingham, an unwinnable seat given the strength apprenticeship in his father’s drapery firm, combin- of the Chamberlain family in the city. At the out- ing this with night classes and lay preaching. It was break of the First World War, Birkett tried to join the on the Ulverston Methodist circuit that Birkett army but twice failed the medical and in he honed his oratorical skills, which were later of so was diagnosed as suffering from tuberculosis. He much use in the courtroom. spent six months convalescing in Ulverston. In , Birkett decided to become a Methodist Throughout the war Birkett kept up his connection minister and in pursuit of this he went to with the Cadbury family, and at the same time be- Emmanuel College, Cambridge, to read Theology came well known on the Midlands legal circuit. In and History, at the relatively advanced age of . , he took part in the general election, contesting He received his History Tripos in and this was the King’s Norton Division of Birmingham as the followed the next year by a First Class degree in the ‘official Liberal candidate’. This was the notorious
Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 9 Birkett’s wife. They were married on conscientious attender at Westminster August at St Pancras Registry Of- and, in spite of the physical strain in- fice. The Birketts set up home in volved, regularly visited his Notting- Hampstead Garden Suburb. They had ham constituency. Being an MP two children, Michael and Linnéa. prompted Birkett to take an impor- With the break-up of the Lloyd tant step in his career. He applied to George Coalition Government, the the Lord Chancellor to be made a death of Bonar Law, and the succession King’s Counsel and his application of Stanley Baldwin, there came a was granted in April . change in government policy towards The downfall of the first Labour tariff reform. Baldwin felt bound by Government led to another general previous pledges to put the new tariff election which took place on Octo- policy to the electorate. Just two weeks ber . The result was a Conservative before polling day in , Norman landslide, precipitated by a scare about Birkett was chosen as Liberal candidate the Government’s links with the Soviet for Nottingham East. The election was Union, which drove many Liberals to fought almost entirely on the tariff re- the right. The Liberals lost seats, in- form issue and the followers of Lloyd cluding Nottingham East which George and Asquith temporarily sank Birkett lost by , votes to the Con- their differences and united. In Not- servatives, with a Communist candidate tingham, where lace-making was the polling over ,. principal industry, Birkett argued that Birkett’s legal career prospered, how- the town’s prosperity depended upon ever, and he was involved in numerous the export of lace, and exports de- sensational court cases. Among them pended on imports. Tariffs would also were the notorious Gladstone Libel ‘Coupon’ election and the Coupon mean dearer food for the housewife. case when he opened for the defendant, candidate for King’s Norton was the Birkett and his wife plunged into a Lord Gladstone, son of W. E. Gladstone, Conservative Sir Hubert Austin – the whirlwind campaign, fighting off the and the obscene publication case of The well-known motor manufacturer. personal attacks of the Tory who said Well of Loneliness, a novel on the theme Birkett had no chance and came bot- Birkett had no more than the ‘the gift of female homosexuality, against tom of the poll. of the gab’. The result on December Jonathan Cape Ltd and Pegasus Press Birkett’s legal practice continued to gave Birkett a majority of ,, an when he appeared for the defence. The grow and, in he joined Marshall outstanding victory as in the Tory former case concerned a book entitled Hall’s chambers in the Inner Temple. majority had been over ,. Portraits and Criticisms by Captain Peter Hall was one of the leading barristers of The new Parliament had Con- Wright, in which W. E. Gladstone’s in- his day and had been impressed by servative members, Labour and terest in the welfare of prostitutes was Birkett’s role in the prosecution in the Liberals. The key to a new gov- characterised as ‘pursuing and possess- notorious ‘Green Bicycle Case’, which ernment was held by the Liberals. ing every sort of woman’. Gladstone’s concerned the death of a woman found When Parliament met in January shot in the head but otherwise un- , Asquith sided with the Labour touched in a country lane, in which Party to put them into power for the Hall was successful for the defence. first time. A week later, Birkett made Over the next three years Birkett his maiden speech in a debate on a teamed up with Marshall Hall and they Labour backbench motion on state became an almost unbeatable pair both pensions for widows with children in defence and prosecution and took and wives and mothers where bread- part in many criminal trials in London winners had been incapacitated. and elsewhere. Birkett supported the motion and For some years, Norman Birkett had went further, calling for consideration known Ruth Nilsson, a Swedish girl for unmarried mothers and, in some known to friends as ‘Billy’, who was on cases, divorced wives. His speech was the welfare staff at Bourneville, and a a great success and the former Liberal warm friendship had developed. Once Cabinet Minister C. F. G. Masterman or twice in the past Birkett had sug- described Birkett as a possible future gested that they should marry. The Lord Chancellor. Birkett, however, forthcoming move to London changed had few political ambitions and his the situation. She decided to give up professional career remained his her post at Cadbury’s and became prime concern. Despite this, he was a
10 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 two surviving sons wrote a deliberately Churchill. He was the Liberal spokes- become the candidate for Torquay, a insulting letter to the author in order to man on the controversial Trade Disputes seat won by a Liberal in , but de- inspire a libellous reply which would Bill which the Government introduced clined. In , after the death of the allow the chance of a court case in in . He set about tearing the Bill to prominent Liberal Member Sir which the allegations against their fa- tatters and, at the Committee stage, mas- Donald Maclean, he was offered the ther could be tackled. Birkett, repre- terminded numerous amendments candidature in North Cornwall, but senting the Gladstones, won, but he lost which were carried. again declined. The alignment of the the second as evidence of ‘literary Ramsay MacDonald would have Liberals with the Conservative ‘estab- merit’ was not permitted until the law liked Birkett as Solicitor General and lishment’ under the National label and was amended thirty years later. another opportunity to offer him the the strong protectionist influence on In Birkett was able to move to post arose in . Birkett was strongly the Government offended him. He a more substantial property in pressed to reconsider his refusal but he was not surprised when Herbert Chalfont, Buckinghamshire, where he again declined and the post went to Samuel and his followers resigned lived for the rest of his life. He stood Stafford Cripps. Birkett was deter- from the Government later in the year. again for Parliament in , regaining mined that he would only fill the post Birkett now devoted himself to his his old seat with a , majority. He as a Liberal, though there seemed little legal practice where he was considered reaped the rewards of nursing the con- hope of there ever being a Liberal gov- to be at the very top of his profession. stituency for some years, the retire- ernment in power again. However, he He was involved in many of the most ment of the sitting Member, and the again came close to being appointed prominent trials of the decade. At the popularity of Lloyd George’s fresh when Ramsay MacDonald formed his outbreak of war in , the Home policy ideas. Birkett found only National Government in the summer Secretary appointed Birkett to chair the Liberal colleagues in the Commons, of . Herbert Samuel, the acting Home Office Committee for Appeals however, and the Liberals were now Liberal Leader, urged MacDonald to Against Internment Orders, under the firmly established as the third party. offer the post again to Birkett who was Emergency Powers Act, and, over the Ramsay MacDonald again formed a prepared to accept on learning that next two years, it examined and re- government and had difficulty in fill- other Liberals, such as Lord Reading, ported on more than , cases. At the ing the legal posts. Much to the disgust Lord Crewe and Samuel were to join same time, he was invited by the BBC of his Liberal colleagues, William the new government. A difficulty arose, to give a weekly talk by way of answer- Jowitt KC – who had sat as a Liberal in however, when it became clear that ing the German propaganda talks by the two previous parliaments and had there would only be one vacancy for a ‘Lord Haw-Haw’. He did this until just been re-elected – decided to join Law Officer’s post, with Cripps but not June when the BBC replaced the Labour ranks in order to qualify Jowitt intending to stand down, and Birkett with J. B. Priestley. Birkett’s for the post of Attorney General that was claimed by the Tories. Birkett work was rewarded with a knighthood. which had been offered to him by the could not accept a non-legal office, Birkett was next despatched to the new Prime Minister. which would entail giving up his legal United States and Canada on a good- Birkett was approached by Downing practice, and so his chance of serving in will mission. On his return in Novem- Street with the tentative offer of the government passed. ber , he was invited to submit his post of Solicitor General if he would The serious economic situation in name for appointment as a judge, a po- follow Jowitt’s example. He replied that the summer of led the Govern- sition he accepted, and he took his seat he, for one, could not change his poli- ment to appeal to the country for a for the first time on November tics in twenty-five minutes and those ‘Doctor’s Mandate’, to do anything that . For the rest of the war, Birkett who knew him best felt that, even if the was needed to alleviate the crisis. Parlia- heard hundreds of cases. One notewor- Liberal Party were to disintegrate com- ment was dissolved and Birkett went thy case in was an action brought pletely, he would not be seen taking back to Nottingham to face the elec- by Learie Constantine, the West Indian refuge in the Labour ark. torate. Birkett was the ‘National candi- cricketer, against the Imperial Hotel in Legal practice continued to keep him date’ but he found himself opposed by London because it refused to receive very busy and he appeared in many Conservative and Labour candidates. and lodge him in accordance with its high-profile cases, but he kept up his at- Birkett was a convinced free trader, the policy that it ‘did not want to have tendance record at the House of Com- To ry was protectionist, and confusion niggers in the hotel’. After hearing the mons as best he could. Together with Sir reigned as Ramsay MacDonald, the evidence, Birkett gave judgement for John Simon, he became one of the two Prime Minister, endorsed Birkett rather the West Indian. leading Liberal spokesmen on the legal than the Labour man. Although the re- On the last day of August , aspects of government legislation, al- sult of the election was a sweeping vic- Birkett was invited by Lord Jowitt, the though his speeches were infrequent. tory for the National candidates, Lord Chancellor, to be the British His attack on a far-reaching clause in the Birkett failed to hold his seat in Not- judge at the international German War Finance Bill of , which infringed tingham East. Crimes trial to be held in Nuremberg. the principle of individual liberty, drew It proved to be the end of his career He accepted provisionally but, three or tributes from many, including Winston in the Commons. He was invited to four days later, he was informed that
Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 11 His next and last appearance in the House of Lords was on February , when he moved an amendment to the Manchester Corporation Bill which sought to augment the city’s wa- ter supply from Ullswater which he, and others interested in preserving the beauties of the Lakes, considered would seriously threaten to spoil them if car- ried out. Birkett carried the day by votes to , but it was to be his final public appearance. The following day, he was rushed to hospital in consider- able pain. An immediate operation was necessary and the doctors found that he was suffering from a fatal impairment of a vital blood vessel. There was no Birkett as a judge at the Nuremberg war crime trials hope and he slipped away without re- gaining consciousness. ‘It was the way the Foreign Office wanted a Law Lord Court of Justice and the protection of for him to go – on the crest of a wave’ appointed, as there was a likelihood of human rights. said Lady Birkett as tributes to her hus- the British judge being made President After some periods of ill health, band flooded in from all parts of the of the Tribunal. Birkett was offered in- Birkett retired from the Bench at the world. Eighteen months later, a plaque, stead the post of British alternate judge end of after fifteen years as a High made of Westmorland green slate, was and, after discussion with Prime Minis- Court judge. He did not retire from unveiled at the renamed ‘Birkett Fell’ ter Attlee, he accepted it. public life, however, and maintained his on the Ullswater shore. The Nuremberg trial opened in activities as Chairman of the Standing Birkett was a Liberal by instinct, November and lasted until Oc- Committee on National Parks, where who, like many of his generation, tober , with Birkett attending all he had been responsible for setting up a would have held high office in an ear- the sessions. It was a harrowing eleven National Parks Commission; at London lier era. Unlike many of his contempo- months, which Birkett chronicled in University, where he was Chairman of raries, he stuck with the Liberal Party, his diary and numerous letters. His the University Court; and as President sacrificing any chance of climbing to American counterpart, Judge Parker, of ‘The Pilgrims’. He also remained in the pinnacle of the legal profession for wrote afterwards of Birkett that, ‘al- demand as a public speaker. the political beliefs etched into him though only an Alternative Member In the New Year Honours list of from birth. A simple man of unim- of the [International Military] Tribu- , Birkett’s name headed the list of peachable integrity, he was one of the nal without a vote, his voice was heard the Prime Minister’s nominations for a commanding legal figures of the mid- in all its deliberations, his hand drafted peerage, and he took his seat in the twentieth century, whose liberalism a large and most important part of its House of Lords on February as pervaded every aspect of his career, not judgement, and no-one connected Baron Birkett of Ulverston. Honours least in his largely unrewarded work at with the Tribunal, Member or other- and Honorary Degrees showered on the Nuremberg trials. wise, had a greater part than he in Birkett and he continued to take an ac- There is a comprehensive, if over- shaping the final result’. In the Birth- tive interest in legal questions in the long, biography of Birkett by H. day Honours list in , Birkett was upper house. He made his maiden Montgomery Hyde (Hamish Hamil- created a Privy Councillor, although speech in the Lords in on a mo- ton, ), which contains a full bib- he was disappointed that this honour tion calling attention to crime in Great liography. was rather less than the peerage Britain. This was prompted by the es- awarded to Geoffrey Lawrence, the tablishment of a Chair of Criminology Tom Dale has been a Liberal councillor, par- British member of the Tribunal. On at Cambridge University. Shortly after- liamentary candidate and a member of staff October , Birkett was sworn in as wards, he moved the second reading of in Parliament and party headquarters; he Lord Justice of Appeal but, although the Obscene Publications Bill. In his was also President of the University of Lon- he was proud of his promotion, he speech, he recalled his defence of The don Students’ Union where, in , he met found the work dull. He kept himself Well of Loneliness in . The Bill be- Sir Norman Birkett. Robert Ingham is a busy broadcasting, speaking at public came law. The first case brought after historical writer and Biographies Editor of events and writing for numerous jour- this change of law was the well-known the Journal. nals. In , he gave a series of broad- publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in casts on the work of the International October .
12 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 Young Liberals R. Ian Elder tells the story of the influence of Scottish young Liberals before and after the Great War. TheThe YoungYoung ScotsScots SocietySociety A lost Liberal legion
pathy among youth towards politics is a functions of municipal government. Conference matter of concern to modern political par resolutions show the wide remit undertaken by the A ties. This was evident in the general YSS, with a strong stress on its Scottish identity. In election, notable for a low turnout, when under , the Leith Branch urged ‘action for Home per cent of the – age group voted. It was not al- Rule All Round, the taxation of Land Values, the re- ways so. Post-, youth organisations such as the form of our Licensing Law and the effective solution Young Conservatives, Young Liberals and Young So- of the housing problem’. The YSS conference cialists were valuable to their parent parties, to whom, condemned indentured Chinese labour in South Af- in recent decades, they have at times proved a source rica, protested against the use of the title Edward VII of embarrassment. Even more remarkable was the ‘out of regard for the honour, historic past and rights part played in Scottish political life by the Young Scots of Scotland’ and urged the General Council to or- Society in the years before , when about per ganise a National Celebration of the fourth cente- cent of adult males could not vote in elections. nary of the birth of John Knox. The electoral consequences which can derive The impact of the YSS was soon felt as ‘New Lib- from party disunity were illustrated in the gen- eralism’ with a radical thrust, and had an impact on eral election, which shattered the long-established parliamentary candidates. In , Hector Liberal dominance in Scotland and saw a resurgence Macpherson, Editor of the Edinburgh Evening News, of Unionism, not least, for example, in Glasgow, warned that ‘Liberalism had become a bunch of where Liberal representation was eliminated in all cheap expedients and candidates from being mis- seven constituencies. Radical Liberals opposed to sionaries of great principles had degenerated into the Boer War clashed with those of imperialistic ten- bands of strolling players’. In the next few years, the dencies who converged around Lord Rosebery. YSS proposed remedies in a series of publications Among the former was James M. Hogge, later to be- and, in the Young Scot, a monthly one. The members come MP for East Edinburgh, who played a leading envisaged national regeneration based on self-gov- role in the formation of the Young Scots Society. ernment leading to legislation on land reclamation, The Society was conceived at a meeting in Edin- temperance, the Poor Law, cheaper transport and a burgh on October , when it was resolved to reorganisation of the educational system ‘so that all form a society ‘for the purpose of educating young may have equal opportunity to develop their facul- men in the fundamental principles of Liberalism and ties and no talent be allowed to run to waste’. of encouraging and stimulating them in the study of While the YSS was never fully integrated into social sciences and economics’. Rapid expansion party organisation, it assumed the much-needed task followed. In , there were , members in of improving organisation. ‘Constituency caucuses thirty branches while, by , , members were harangued into activity’ and YSS criticisms of were recorded among fifty branches. These branches the quality of many Liberal candidates were effec- were formed throughout the country, with the ma- tive. The Young Scots’ vigorous radical policies found jority in urban areas. a welcoming response from some leading and several From the outset emphasis was placed on the po- future parliamentarians. By , the YSS claimed litical education of members, soon to be comple- the support of sixteen MPs, among them Henry mented by campaigning. The branch syllabi indicate Campbell Bannerman, James Bryce, George regular meetings to discuss topics such as temper- MacRae and James Dalziel and of fifteen candidates, ance, women’s suffrage, old age pensions and the including James Hogge, Arthur Dewar, Robert
Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 13 Munro and John Gulland, some of While in there was a Con- hired to tour parts of the country, lit- whom ‘rose to prominence through the servative recovery in England, the Lib- erature was freely distributed en route activities of the Young Scots who had erals consolidated their position in (such as a comprehensive leaflet pro- done so much to revitalise the Scottish Scotland, helped by skilful YSS cam- duced in , Points for Scottish Liberals both organisationally and in- paigning concentrated largely on Un- Home Rule) and evening public meet- tellectually’. ionist-held seats and Liberal marginals. ings were held. When accommodation Campaigning zeal was fully dis- Special efforts were made in the indus- could not be found for a night, mem- played between and on be- trial burghs and counties in the west bers slept in the open air, so great was half of the defence of free trade against where Conservative strength had been their enthusiasm for the cause. Their tariff reform. The mass distribution of augmented by Liberal Unionist support activities aroused admiration and alarm propaganda leaflets aimed at retaining after . Candidates who were vo- among opponents. After a by-election or wooing working men’s support, cally in favour of YSS policies were the Unionist chairman of North Ayr- based partly on the fear that protection- given a great deal of assistance. shire urged on his party the need ‘of ism would increase the price of food, Home rule was a feature of the Scot- bringing in more of the younger gen- was combined with open-air demon- tish radical tradition; a Scottish Home eration to oppose the Young Scots and strations addressed by leading Liberals. Rule Association was created with Lib- others on the Radical side’. The Con- However, the general election was eral support in . Although Liberal servative-sponsored Junior Imperial won not just on the trade question, and MPs proposed bills to that effect from League never matched the effectiveness YSS literature reveals the emphasis put the s on, there was no great mo- of the YSS before . on social issues. A edition of the mentum behind the movement. To Prospective candidates were Young Scot had stated: ‘If the social prob- provide the necessary impetus, the YSS screened and, at times, efforts made to lem is ignored, one may predict the im- intensified its clamour for home rule to block English ones. Just as in the past minent revolt from Liberalism of the be placed high on the Liberal agenda. two decades Scottish Tories have sought working classes. The Young Scots must In , the Society’s constitution was ‘cities of refuge’ in England, many Eng- guide the party in the more excellent changed, to include the specific aim ‘to lish Liberals were tempted to secure way of the New Liberalism’. Thus the further the national interests of Scot- nomination for what were then threat from the emerging Labour Party land and secure the right of self-gov- deemed safe seats in Scotland. In the was clearly foreseen and the need for ernment’. Stress was always placed on summer of , Charles Masterman radical policies to counteract it. It is sig- the prospect of an Edinburgh-based considered it diplomatic to withdraw nificant that, apart from in one of the parliament being a means to the end of from his quest for Glasgow Tradeston seats in Dundee, there was no equiva- securing reforms. while, surprisingly, in view of the lent in Scotland to the arrangement in To promote this aspiration, the YSS GOM’s Scottish connections, there was England which allowed Labour to con- did three things concurrently – en- resentment at the nomination of his test some constituencies in with- gaged in unrelenting propaganda and grandson W. G. C. Gladstone for a by- out Liberal opposition. campaigning, displayed rather insensi- election in Kilmarnock in the autumn. After ‘the radical edge of Scottish tive nationalist prejudices in candidate The National Council of the YSS only Liberalism was reinforced by electoral selection and maintained pressure on endorsed him after he pledged to work success and the intake of the new YS Liberal MPs. Warmly supportive of for the speedy enactment of Scottish MPs’. This was reflected in a flow of de- Irish home rule, members were confi- home rule. mands for far-reaching reforms and, in dent that it would be followed by a The voting record of MPs was particular, against the Conservative- Scottish Home Rule Bill within the monitored and those absent from a dominated House of Lords, always a sub- lifetime of the parliament elected in Scottish Home Rule Bill division ject of vehement denunciation in YSS December . Two arguments were made to account for themselves. leaflets. The YSS conference of , shrewdly used for such haste were that Included in that number was one of the clearly ahead of government policy at the Irish home rule would be more accept- MPs for Dundee – Winston Churchill. time, sought women’s franchise, PR by able to some of its opponents if pre- Such was the influence of the Young STV, the taxation of Land Values, local op- sented as the first instalment towards a Scots that MPs were careful not to an- tion, and proposed that ‘the public have federal structure for the UK, soon to be tagonise them, as many depended on the right of access to and free fishing in all extended to Scotland, and that reduced their support at election times, espe- Scottish streams and natural lochs’. In Irish representation at Westminster cially as there were indications that the keeping with the tendency whereby reli- would make Scottish home rule more national leadership could not take their gious issues, not least those relevant to de- difficult to achieve in the face of reso- support for granted. Some members at nominations, could become matters of lute Conservative opposition. the National Council expressed political controversy, it protested against At the Young Scots’ lively and well- concern that help was always given to the action of the Bishop of Lahore in pre- reported meetings, heckling was not Liberal candidates even when Labour venting the use of Presbyterian rites in a only an art but delighted the crowds ones were ‘more sound on progressive garrison church in India and demanded and was encouraged by the speakers. principles’. Some threatened to aid La- ‘redress without further delay’. Periodically, a horse-drawn van was bour candidates if there was any weak-
14 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 ening by the Asquith Government in of Labour, after the Irish settlement of dent Democrats, The Scottish Electoral System, promoting home rule. , Liberal failure to make larger gains 1884–1929 (1996) p. 93. 7 Result of 1906 general election in Scotland: Lib- The considerable pressure exerted in the general election, and re- eral 58; Unionist 10; Labour 2. on the government was effective. newed divisions among Liberals at na- 8 Richard J. Finlay, p. 56. Asquith’s Government between tional level after the formation of the 9 Some of the several seats involved were as fol- lows: Dumfries Burghs where John Gulland had and was confronted with major National Government in all con- small majorities in 1906 (633) and in a 1909 by- problems – the struggle with the House tributed towards the collapse of branch election (292) was retained in Jan. 1910 (573). of Lords, the antics of the Suffragettes, and national organisation in the years Wick Burghs which had been Unionist in 1900 and 1906 was gained and held by Robert labour unrest, the deep rift over Irish before . Munro in Jan. 1910 (275) and Dec. 1910 (211). home rule. Although Asquith’s attitude In a world of a government influ- In South Edinburgh, Arthur Dewar, who had re- was supportive it was a lukewarm sup- enced by opinion polls, focus groups, gained the seat in 1906 from a Liberal Unionist port, as he wished to proceed by stages, spin-doctoring, control-freakery, the and retained it in a 1909 by-election on becom- ing Solicitor-General for Scotland, was returned giving precedence to Ireland. However, decline of public meetings and political in Jan. 1910 as was C. H. Lyell in Dec. 1910 ‘without enthusiasm, the government indifference verging at times on cyni- when Dewar became a Senator of the College allowed itself to be persuaded by the cism, the YSS has long since been for- of Justice. 10 Results of 1910 general elections in Scotland: Scots MPs that home rule for Scotland gotten. Yet its legacy merits more at- Jan: Liberal 59; Unionist 9; Labour 2. and Ireland sh[ould] proceed more or tention than has been accorded to it. Dec: Liberal 58; Unionist 9; Labour 3. less in step’ as an earnest of a compre- The Young Scots Society was an invalu- 11 ‘We submit to the government that they make Home Rule for Scotland as a means of land re- hensive devolution policy. Accordingly, able campaigning force in the successful form and social reform the supreme issue of a Bill proposing an Executive and Par- defence of free trade and election vic- Scottish policy. We urge all Scottish progressive liament for Scotland and the retention tories in and . Thereafter, as a members to cease to cherish vain hopes of Scot- of seventy-two MPs at Westminster formidable pressure group, its members tish reform from London.’ YSS Annual Confer- ence (1911), National Library of Scotland, ACC from Scotland passed its second reading were ‘the spearhead of the attack which 3 72 1. in and despite strong opposition forced the Liberal government to sup- 12 Information from the late John G. Gray, solicitor from the Unionists, who asserted that port Home Rule for Scotland’. Capa- and former Liberal councillor in Edinburgh, whose father was a prominent member of the there was no popular demand for such ble of accelerating the advance of Lib- YSS before and after the 1914–18 War. The au- a measure, seemed set to reach the stat- eral fortunes before , they were as thor has in his possession a copy of a lecture ute book. It proved to be a false dawn, powerless as the party’s organisation to which J. G. Gray gave in 1991 to the Scottish Liberal Club re Liberal politics in Edinburgh in however, because the outbreak of war reverse decline after . They were the 20th Century. in led to the suspension of home men of independent mind who prac- 13 Ayr Advertiser 28/12/1911. rule for Ireland and Scotland. tised the Gladstonian belief in the need 14 Richard J. Finlay, p. 60. The – War had adverse effects for political passion. Their example can 15 Y. S. Handbook (1911) p. 13. 16 Michael Fry, Patronage and Principle, A Political on the YSS. The Young Scots con- still inspire. We do well to honour their History of Modern Scotland (1987) p. 128. demned German militarism and sup- memory. 17 After 1910 there were negotiations for a merger ported the government. Most branches between the Conservatives and the Liberal Un- ionists. These made more rapid progress in Eng- were placed in a state of suspended ani- R. Ian Elder graduated in history from Ed- land than in Scotland for conclusion in 1912 and mation, although some activity was inburgh University, and is a former Rector of were aided by hostility towards Home Rule. A maintained at national level. Despite val- Webster’s High School, Kirriemuir. modern Conservative historian wrote ‘The Scot- tish Right continued to draw its main strength iant efforts, the YSS was not destined to from those groups which had deserted the Lib- recover its former momentum. Its de- 1 Glasgow results erals in 1886. Thus it was appropriate for the cline cannot be dissociated from that of Unionist Liberal Liberal Labour combined party to assume the name of Union- (Cons) Unionist the Liberal Party. The rejuvenation of the ist.’ Fry, p. 130. 1900 4 3 – – 18 Michael Fry, p. 142. Unionists after and the gravitation 1906 – 2 4 1 19 The author recalls visiting Alexander Begbie, an of many political activists towards the 2 Richard J. Finlay, A Partnership for Good? Scot- Edinburgh lapidary, who died in 1957 at the age tish Politics and the Union since 1880 (1997) p. Labour Party were ominous signs for of 81. One of the last of the pre 1914 Young 53. Scots, he was the epitome of the well-informed those who had hoped for home rule 3 Muirhead Papers, National Library of Scotland Radical working man who never wavered in his from a now divided Liberal Party. In ACC 640 1. This large collection of letters, political loyalty and deplored the lack of fervour speeches, publications, press cuttings, confer- , Viscount Haldane warned the Ed- and activity by Scottish Liberals after the 1950 ence agendas and resolutions constitutes a general election. inburgh Branch of the YSS of the men- valuable source of information re the YSS. 20 Jack Brand, The National Movement in Scotland ace that Labour aspirations posed to Lib- Roland E. Muirhead, who died in 1964 at the (1978) p. 172. eralism. Efforts were made to face up to age of 92, was for long an active Liberal and 21 Liberal decline in the face of Unionist success in President of Bridge of Weir YS. He transferred this and regain impetus after Liberal re- becoming the main opposition to Labour can be his allegiance to the ILP, then, losing faith in ex- seen in the 1922–24 general election results. It union in . A modest revival fol- isting parties, moved towards nationalism of an did not become a reality until 1924. lowed but political polarisation along independent nature, becoming a founder mem- Unionist National Liberal Labour ber of the National Party of Scotland in 1928, Liberal class lines with Labour ‘able to reap ben- which was later integrated into the Scottish Na- 1922 13 12 15 29 efit from the enfranchisement of ’, tional Party. 1923 14 – 22 34 the loosening of links between Liberals 4 Muirhead Papers ACC 6401. 1924 36 – 8 26 5 Richard J. Finlay, p. 53. and Roman Catholics, to the advantage 6 Michael Dyer, Capable Citizens and Improvi-
Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 15 Interview Adrian Slade looks back with John PardoePardoe, Liberal MP for North Cornwall, 1966–79. WhatWhat mightmight havehave beenbeen
he Liberal Party of the ’s and early ’s the recently elected new MP was Margaret was personified by Jo Grimond and Jeremy Thatcher. In the ’ election he achieved a signifi- T Thorpe but, of the half-dozen newer MPs cant Liberal vote, remembered thirty years later in who deservedly won important places in the hearts the lady’s memoirs. ‘It was quite a favourable men- of Liberals, two made a particular impact on the tion, much better than I got from Denis Healey, who public at large. David Steel was quickly respected, was vitriolic about me’, he recalls with feeling. not just for his skilful piloting of his ground-break- Expecting to fight another election in Finchley, ing Abortion Bill but also as an effective Chief Whip he and his wife Joy had bought a small house in for Jeremy Thorpe, while John Pardoe, the towering, Hampstead (an affordable possibility in those days). booming MP for North Cornwall, later become Instead he was offered, and took, the opportunity of equally widely recognised as the party’s economic a much more winnable seat, North Cornwall. The spokesman, and the scourge of Chancellor Denis Pardoes kept on the Hampstead house, where they Healey during the and elections and the still live, but felt obliged also to buy a small place in Lib/Lab Pact.. Cornwall. They still own that too. In it was Pardoe and Steel who fought out In March ’ a triumphant John Pardoe, a tenor the succession to Thorpe in the party’s leadership of fine voice and theatrical leanings, led the singing election. If Pardoe had won, third party politics in on his day of victory – one of thirteen seats won or Britain might have been very different. He did not fa- held for the Liberals on that day. Just four years later vour the Pact – ‘There was nothing in it for us’ – and only six of those MPs survived a disastrous election he says he would have encouraged Roy Jenkins to for the party, but Pardoe was one of them. Immedi- join the Liberals rather than create a separate SDP. He ately he became crucial to the party’s survival. may have lost the leadership argument at the time but ‘In those first few years there were actually only it took the Liberal front bench some years to recover three of us who ever turned up’, he says. ‘Russell was from the unexpected loss of his seat in . off doing his usual Europe- and world-wide bit, John Pardoe’s political career had begun in the ’ Emlyn (Hooson) went back to court and Jo really election, not as a Liberal but as postal votes officer didn’t appear, which left Jeremy, David and me to do for one of the Labour Party’s leading left-wingers, almost everything. With such a small number we Lena Jaeger, the MP for St Pancras. ‘I regarded myself even had a terrible job keeping the Liberal table in as being very much part of the left of the party’, he the House of Commons dining room!’ says. ‘It was my friends who ran up the red flag over Despite these privations their efforts bore fruit in St Pancras Town Hall! But I was unhappy with a clutch of by-election gains during the Heath Gov- Hugh Gaitskell and bitterly disappointed when it ernment, leading to the Liberal high point of more became clear that Nye Bevan was never going to be- than million votes polled in the February ’ elec- come Labour leader. So really I came to the Liberal tion. The party had still only won twelve seats but, Party thinking that I was moving left. That was en- with no overall majority for anyone, how should tirely due to Jo Grimond. He had changed the Liberals react? whole vision of what Liberalism was about. He had ‘The results fell short of our hopes in terms of set it definitively to the left of centre, indeed in many seats but were nearly as good in terms of votes, and respects left of the left. It was “left” in that curious obviously we were now a power in the land’, says Liberal fashion – you know, co-partnership and Pardoe. ‘I was in North Cornwall when we heard ownership through industrial democracy, not state the outcome and I rang Jeremy immediately, saying ownership.’ that he should find every possible excuse not to go It did not take long for Pardoe to be selected as a up to London for discussions with Heath over the Liberal parliamentary candidate – in Finchley, where weekend. I told him that all hell would break loose if
16 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 he did. And, when I was interviewed ‘The press were pretty vitriolic, hav- for the national news that night, I said ing set us up as a choice between the firmly that I had known Jeremy for Radical v. the Other or the Left v. the years and that there would be no deal.’ Right. There was some truth in that but Nevertheless Jeremy Thorpe did it was not particularly helpful.’ When soon go and see Heath. There was a the election was over the two candi- major party outcry, but, as Pardoe had dates buried their differences and gen- predicted three days before, no deal was erally worked well together, but the re- ever done. ‘I had rather set the cat lationship was put under strain by among the pigeons but there wasn’t David Steel’s enthusiasm for a Lib/Lab anything Heath could offer’ he says. Pact, designed to keep Thatcher’s Tories ‘The mathematics didn’t add up. Our out of power. two parties did not amount to a major- ‘That wasn’t a happy situation ei- ity. We would have had to do a deal ther’, says Pardoe ‘but again we were with the Northern Ireland MPs. In any more or less set up to have that kind of case Heath had not even thought for a continuing row. David Steel had for- moment about PR, not even a Com- mulated the view years before that the mission. It was never on.’ future of the party lay in some kind of Deal or no deal, Pardoe feels that op- deal with Labour moderates. That was come we got nothing from it. That was portunities were then lost between the not my view of the realignment of the the tragedy and, in the event, that was two elections. ‘I didn’t know at that time left. He and I had both come into the the perception of the press and the out- why Jeremy seemed not to have any idea party attracted by Jo’s ideas of realign- side world.’ Did any MPs actually vote what to do with the situation we had ment, but his view was very much, not against the Pact? ‘Yes. Jo Grimond. I created in February. I know now that it that it would be the Liberal Party that think he was the only one.’ Why Jo? was a lot to do with the personal pres- would become the realignment of the Did he not favour realignment? ‘Not of sures that were building on him, but I left, but that we would have to do a that sort. He and I both believed in rea- didn’t know that then and I kept going deal, as junior partners, with people in lignment through the Liberal Party’, to him saying “Come on, Jeremy. The the Labour Party. I did not agree with says Pardoe. And if there hadn’t been a goal’s open. We’ve got to do something.” that but I followed his line because we Pact? ‘There would have been a general In the end nothing really happened un- had to sink or swim together.’ election and I believe we would have til the amazing hovercraft tour, and that ‘It became perfectly clear at the out- done better in it that we did two years was a bit of a disaster. I don’t actually set of those negotiations that David was later in .’ think that Jeremy had his mind on the going to be the good guy as far as La- Improbably Pardoe does not blame job, for reasons that are obvious now, but bour was concerned. He was absolutely the Pact but the leadership election for the tragic thing is that the outcome in determined to make the Pact work at the surprising loss of his seat. ‘I think October was a great disappointment.’ the expense of actually achieving any- North Cornwall expected me to win The personal pressures to which thing about which Liberals could say the leadership. They certainly voted for Pardoe refers led later to Jeremy “look what we have done”. I took the me in vast numbers but, when I didn’t Thorpe’s resignation and Pardoe’s battle view that my voters and party members win, the comment the press had made with David Steel in the ensuing, rather needed something to assure them that about me then and during the general bad-tempered, leadership election – re- we had got something other than just election rebounded. That’s the main membered by many Liberals for an un- the chance of saving our seats.’ reason why I lost.’ warranted suggestion that Pardoe wore ‘I have always taken the view that, Now out of Parliament, Pardoe de- a hairpiece. Did he enjoy the contest? unless it becomes very, very large, prob- cided to turn to making money in busi- ‘No.’ Did he ever think he was going to ably number two in terms of seats, the ness and the media. For two years he win? ‘I suppose I did for perhaps the party cannot enter into any arrange- hosted a Sunday programme about tel- first week, but the problem that re- ment with another party safely without evision for London Weekend. ‘But peo- search soon made very clear was that the absolute certainty that the next ple like Ian Trethowan advised me not to David was much better known than I general election will be fought on PR. get too involved in television because of was. However, later there was an inter- Otherwise you are opting for total dis- the difficulties of getting long-term esting statistical aberration. Analysis by aster. And the problem with any other work, he says. ‘So, at the same time, when Michael Steed indicated that the ma- form of alliance is that it is likely to be a I was lucky enough to be offered the jority of party activists and people who centrist compromise.’ managing directorship of Sight & voted after attending election meetings ‘There had been a moment in the Sound, a staff and computer training voted for me, while the vast majority of early Pact negotiations when some company, I accepted the job.’ And he re- members who stayed at home and read form of PR might have been consid- mained in it until when the com- newspapers or watched us on the tel- ered, not proposed by Callaghan but pany received ‘an offer we couldn’t evision gave their votes to David.’ pushed for by me, but in the final out- refuse’ from the Davy Corporation. He
Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 17 agreed to remain involved for a further ‘Because David Steel was a Social cannot put the Liberal Party’s head in a two years, deciding to retire for good in Democrat. He had always been one. He noose unless you are absolutely sure . came from that tradition, but I had that you have PR in your grasp.’ In the ’s he made two further for- never had a strong feeling for Social And would the SDP have happened ays into politics. Very shortly before the Democracy. We used to view Social either? ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. I ’ election David Steel asked him to Democrats as the great white soft un- don’t know whether it is true, as David join the first Liberal/SDP Alliance derbelly of the Labour Party.’ So what Owen alleges, that over dinner David campaign committee. ‘The only prob- was Owen? ‘A very curious creature. Steel persuaded Roy Jenkins not to join lem with that one was the mess as to Clearly not wet through, but from a the Liberals and to start his own party, who was actually leader’, he says. ‘David very different strand of Social Democ- with a view to siphoning off Labour was chairman of the campaign and was racy.’ But very much from the right of MPs and later merging, but I doubt if expected by Liberals to be the front Labour and to the right of the Social Roy would have come to dinner with man but the press kept asking Roy Democrats? ‘Oh, yes. As I say, I never me. I do know that, if he had, I would questions. To say the least that led to a felt much for Social Democracy.’ But have encouraged him to join us. It lot of contradictions, which I was sup- given that he had a strong feeling for would have been a very different Lib- posed to sort out. I may have been al- Liberalism, surely he wouldn’t describe eral Party, and it might not have been most the only person in England at the Owen as a Grimondian Liberal? ‘No, any more successful, but it would cer- time with a mobile telephone but that no, no. Not at all,’ he says quickly. ‘And I tainly have been different.’ was not enough. The results of the elec- disagreed with him on defence, but we Finally, how much of the Grimond tion were not as good as we had hoped.’ got on well personally.’ legacy did he see in the Liberal Demo- Pardoe had not expected to con- If Pardoe had been around during crats of today? Was the party closer to tinue in this role, but it was not long the merger negotiations, would he have the Grimond left of centre than the Al- before he was approached again, this voted for merger? ‘No. The ’ election liance had been? ‘Yes, but the Liberal time jointly by Steel and David Owen, was my most searing political experi- Democrats have to be careful to be left who asked him to chair the committee ence and, to my horror, I discovered but not Labour left. Jo didn’t believe, for the next election. They wanted him during it just how much most Liberals and nor do I, that you can ever really to plan the campaign and, particularly, hated David Owen and most Social win, or achieve electoral satisfaction by to chair the press conferences with Democrats, and wanted to screw their simply putting more money into public both of them present. This was sup- necks.’ By merging or not merging services – health, education, whatever. posed to avoid the confusions of the with them? ‘Preferably by not merging You will never be able to prove, or per- previous election. ‘I know I was asked with them.’ But didn’t some Liberals see suade electors, that what you have spent because I was the only Liberal that merger and absorption as the way to do has made their service better. That’s the David Owen could bear’, he says. ‘And I it? For once uncertain of his answer, shared fallacy of some Liberal Demo- was the only Liberal who could bear Pardoe pauses and casts his mind back crats and members of the government.’ David Owen. Of course it never really to the ’s. ‘Look, Adrian, you’ve got Pardoe has played no part in politics worked out the way they wanted.’ the problem here that, if I had been for fifteen years. At , he remains the Politically, did he feel more in tune leader, the Pact would never have hap- energetic radical he always was, but with Owen or Steel? ‘Oh, Owen.’ Why? pened for the simple reason that you spends his time reading, walking all over the world, going to the theatre, doing home improvements and, very deliberately, not reading a daily news- paper or watching television news. ‘And nor should any politician,’ he says somewhat provocatively. He keeps up with current affairs through the Sunday newspapers, the occasional weekly newspaper and radio. It appears to be enough to keep his political views firmly intact.
Adrian Slade was the last President of the Liberal Party before merger with the SDP in . He was elected to the Greater London Council in and led the Alliance group on the GLC until abolition. A shorter ver- sion of this interview was first published in Liberal Democrat News in July .
18 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 Biography Larry Iles and Robert Ingham take a look at the life and political career of the first woman Liberal MP, Margaret Wintringham (1879–1955). TheThe firstfirst womanwoman LiberalLiberal MPMP
t is well known that the US-born Conservative in the country, and was involved with Louth Auxil- socialite Viscountess Nancy Astor was the first iary Hospital. I woman to sit in the House of Commons, for Ply- Thomas Wintringham was elected as Member for mouth Sutton from . Perhaps less well known is Louth at a by-election in June as an Asquithian the first woman to be elected to Parliament, Countess Liberal. The seat had traditionally been Liberal, with Markievicz (née Gore-Booth). elected as Sinn Fein a strong dissenting vote in its many villages and Member for Dublin St Patrick’s in who, of hamlets, but the result was still something of a sur- course, never took her seat. Now unknown is the first prise and was the only independent Liberal gain of UK-born woman MP, Margaret Wintringham, the the year. His wife’s local prominence may have con- Liberal Member for Louth from to . She tributed to his success, not least because she had or- blazed a trail as the first radical woman MP in an era ganised relief work following a severe flood in the when the House of Commons truly was an all-male district. His career was brief – he died of a heart at- institution and scorn was often poured on the notion tack in the House of Commons Smoking Room on of there being a relevant and distinctive women’s per- August , aged . Margaret Wintringham was spective on important political issues. chosen to contest the resulting by-election; the local Margaret Longbottom was born on August Liberals no doubt were keen to benefit from the in Oldfield, West Yorkshire, the daughter of sympathy she might attract as well as her own public David Longbottom of nearby Silsden. She was edu- record. She was advised by the party leadership to cated at Keighley Grammar School and trained as a keep quiet at hustings and to wear widow’s weeds. teacher at Bedford College, gaining work in The Tories fought hard to regain the seat, accusing Grimsby. The school of which she became headmis- the Liberals of calling the by-election in indecent tress in Grimsby is now named after her. In Grimsby haste, but Wintringham’s easy manner on the door- she met Thomas Wintringham, a timber inspector step and, crucially, the support she received from who had unsuccessfully sought to represent the women’s suffrage societies across the UK ensured town in the Liberal interest in a by-election in . she won by votes. It was a particularly impressive They married in at Ilkley Congregational victory given that Labour had intervened for the Church and settled in Louth, Lincolnshire. first time in Louth and had taken nearly one-fifth of Wintringham soon became involved in a wide- the vote, primarily from the industrial areas on the range of voluntary organisations, becoming a promi- constituency’s Yorkshire fringe. nent member of the local community. Inspired by its Her campaign generated much interest in the role in Canada, she founded a branch of the Wom- press, both at home and overseas, The Times being en’s Institute and was later involved with the organi- particularly horrified that a Liberal woman should sation at a national level. She chaired the Women’s have defeated a Tory knight. Women’s groups were War Agriculture Committee and was a member of naturally delighted that a further blow had been the Lincolnshire Agriculture Committee, which struck for their cause and that, unlike Lady Astor, promoted home-grown food at the expense of im- Wintringham was one of their own. It must have ports. She was President of Louth Women’s Liberal been intimidating for Wintringham to enter the Association, which she built into one of the biggest House of Commons as one of only two women
Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 19 Members. In later speeches she often introducing its own measures and asked men in the audience to appreci- eventually formed the basis of Tory ate how uncomfortable they would legislation. have felt joining an almost entirely fe- With her emphasis on social issues, male assembly. Some MPs, most nota- and her outspoken contempt for the bly the veteran Conservative Sir cosy, all-male boorishness of the House Frederick Banbury, were openly hostile, of Commons, Wintringham came as was the Tory press, which often chose across to many as a wild radical. She was to report the activities of women certainly portrayed as such by her Tory Members in a flagrantly sexist manner. opponent in after being one of When eight women Members were re- only fifteen Liberal MPs to back the turned in , Wintringham acted as Government over its Russian policy, their unofficial cross-party co- the issue on which it fell. Her family ordinator (a difficult job given the dif- background was one of conventional ferences between them) and she used Liberalism, however – she once remi- this role to raise the profile of ‘women’s nisced in the House of Commons issues’, such as birth control. about walking miles with her brothers exclusion from the new ideas fer- The House of Commons quickly to hear Gladstone speak – and she was mented by Lloyd George and his sup- discovered that Wintringham was a at heart a party loyalist. She also com- porters. Few Liberals stood in and new phenomenon: an energetic, radi- manded the respect of the House when Wintringham was no exception, but in cal woman. Her maiden speech, which she spoke on agricultural questions, she contested Aylesbury. If not to- made the front page of the New York something to which The Times paid tally hopeless – the division had re- Times, savaged as ‘false economy’ the tribute in her obituary. Wintringham turned a Liberal in – it was a safe public expenditure cuts of the Lloyd had urged the party leadership to focus To ry seat and an odd choice for a George coalition. She was firmly on on the Liberals’ positive domestic former MP. She lost by over , the left of the Liberal Party, describing agenda rather than to talk up the Bol- votes. She was not asked to contest the herself as a progressive, and spoke shevik menace in , and she backed by-election for the seat, nor did mainly on social issues. She made good the official Liberal line against the she pursue an initial interest in contest- use of parliamentary questions and General Strike. She was in favour of the ing the Gainsborough constituency. brought new issues to the fore, such as National Government, at least at Wintringham was an active con- women’s pay and employment condi- first. Had she followed many of her tributor to many aspects of Liberal tions. Amongst the causes she took up contemporaries into Labour in the politics. She was President of the Wom- were the failure of the Hong Kong au- mid-s she might well have re- en’s Liberal Federation on three sepa- thorities to tackle child slavery and turned to Parliament, but she stuck rate occasions and regularly contrib- prostitution; the dismissal, on eco- with the Liberals. uted to the Women’s Liberal News until it nomic grounds, of Fiji’s only woman Wintringham increased her majority was closed down in . She used this maternity doctor; the deportation to in the election to , though she platform to give her views on social is- the Irish Free State of supporters of de probably expected to do better than that. sues in the many countries she visited, Valera in the civil war, who were likely Labour’s withdrawal from the hustings, causing controversy in when she to face execution; and the failure of apparently in her favour, benefited the praised nursery education and the the Canadian authorities to extract two older parties in almost equal meas- equality of men’s and women’s working maintenance payments from former ure. Although her majority again in- conditions in the Soviet Union. She World War One soldiers who had fa- creased in , this time to ,, was also a regular contributor to the US thered illegitimate children in the UK. Wintringham could not resist the tide Christian Science Monitor. During the At the Women’s Liberal Federation’s which swept away most Liberal MPs in Second World War she called in the let- conference in she made a strong . In that election she lost by , ters page of The Times for more to be attack on the Labour Government’s votes to the Conservative candidate, A. P. done for injured merchant seamen, a failure to sign up to the new Interna- Heneage, a moderate local farmer, who particularly emotive issue in Grimsby. tional Labour Organisation covenants was to hold the seat until . She served for many years on the ex- on the exploitation of women and Wintringham made two unsuccess- ecutive of the radical women’s Six child labour, which contributed to a ful attempts to return to Parliament. In Points Group, was an independent ministerial U-turn on the issue. she must have been hopeful of re- member of Lindsey County Council, Wintringham also introduced a Private gaining Louth: she polled her highest and was also a magistrate in the county. Member’s Bill to make the provision of ever total – , – but lost by Late in life Wintringham moved child support more egalitarian, which votes. Labour’s return to the fray may from Louth to Lincoln and then Lon- was opposed by some reactionary ele- have been a decisive factor, but her don, where she died in a nursing home ments in her own party but which election address was uncharacteristi- on March , aged . Even at the spurred the Labour Government into cally lacking in vigour, reflecting her time of her death she was unknown to
20 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 most Liberals, her name preserved only being dangerously left-wing. The Lib- was published in the Christian Science as the title of a prize awarded at Wom- eral Party lost one of its biggest assets by Monitor on October . en’s Liberal Federation conferences. marginalising Wintringham from the Wintringham played a crucial role in s until her death. It is tempting to Lawrence Irvine Iles is the US/Canada the process by which ‘women’s issues’ think that she would have been better representative of the British Labour Party were recognised as being of central im- suited to the politics of more recent Heritage Group and an adjunct visiting his- portance to society, and in beginning to years than to the more conservative tory instructor at Kirksville Adult Education break down the overt sexism of the ‘safety first’ politics of the s. Te c hnical Center, Missouri, US. Robert British establishment. Margaret Wintringham is the sub- Ingham is Biographies Editor of the Journal Wintringham’s disappearance from ject of only one other biographical es- of Liberal Democrat History. the upper echelons of the Liberal Party say, in A Biographical Dictionary of Femi- after the s is both curious and dis- nists. She was profiled in the New 1 See Daily Telegraph, ‘Mrs Wintringham’s Ad- appointing, but perhaps she lacked the York magazine Current Opinion in dress’, 18 May 1922. 2 Women’s Liberal News, ‘Impressions of Russia’, social connections of the Bonham March and a statement of her po- July 1934. Carters and Lloyd Georges or was re- litical beliefs, in the form of two ad- 3Vol. 2 , O. Banks (Ed.), London, 1990. garded by the party establishment as dresses to the Liberal Summer School,
Research in Progress If you can help any of the individuals listed below with sources, contacts, or any other information — or if you know anyone who can — please pass on details to them. Details of other research projects in progress should be sent to the Editor (see page 2) for inclusion here.
The party agent and English electoral culture, c.1880 – c.1906. The Liberals and the local government of London 1919–39. Chris Fox, development of political agency as a profession, the role of the 173 Worplesdon Road, Guildford GU2 6XD; election agent in managing election campaigns during this period, [email protected]. and the changing nature of elections, as increased use was made of Crouch End or Hornsey Liberal Association or Young Liberals in the the press and the platform. Kathryn Rix, Christ's College, 1920s and 1930s; especially any details of James Gleeson or Patrick Cambridge, CB2 2BU; [email protected]. Moir, who are believed to have been Chairmen. Tony Marriott, Flat Liberal policy towards Austria-Hungary, 1905–16. Andrew A, 13 Coleridge Road, Crouch End, London N8 8EH. Gardner, 22 Birdbrook House, Popham Road, Islington, London N1 Liberal foreign policy in the 1930s. Focussing particularly on Liberal 8TA; [email protected]. anti-appeasers. Michael Kelly, 12 Collinbridge Road, Whitewell, The Hon H. G. Beaumont (MP for Eastbourne 1906–10). Any Newtownabbey, Co. Antrim BT36 7SN information welcome, particularly on his political views (he stood as The Liberal Party and the wartime coalition 1940–45. Sources, a Radical). Tim Beaumont, 40 Elms Road, London SW4 9EX. particularly on Sinclair as Air Minister, and on Harcourt Johnstone, Edmund Lamb (Liberal MP for Leominster 1906–10). Any Dingle Foot, Lord Sherwood and Sir Geoffrey Maunder (Sinclair's information on his election and period as MP; wanted for biography PPS) particularly welcome. Ian Hunter, 9 Defoe Avenue, Kew, of his daughter, Winfred Lamb. Dr David Gill, Richmond TW9 4DL; [email protected]. [email protected]. The Unservile State Group, 1953–1970s. Dr Peter Barberis, 24 Joseph King (Liberal MP for North Somerset during the Great War). Lime Avenue, Flixton, Manchester M41 5DE. Any information welcome, particularly on his links with the Union The Young Liberal Movement 1959–1985; including in particular of Democratic Control and other opponents of the war (including relations with the leadership, and between NLYL and ULS. Carrie his friend George Raffalovich). Colin Houlding; Park, 89 Coombe Lane, Bristol BS9 2AR; [email protected] [email protected]. The political life and times of Josiah Wedgwood MP. Study of the The revival of the Liberal Party in the 1960s and ‘70s; including the political life of this radical MP, hoping to shed light on the question relationships between local and parliamentary electoral of why the Labour Party replaced the Liberals as the primary performance. Access to party records (constituency- and ward- popular representatives of radicalism in the 1920s. level) relating to local activity in London and Birmingham, and Paul Mulvey, 112 Richmond Avenue, London N1 0LS; interviews with key activists of particular interest. Paul Lambe, [email protected]. University of Plymouth; [email protected]. Recruitment of Liberals into the Conservative Party, 1906–1935. The political and electoral strategy of the Liberal Party 1970–79. Aims to suggest reasons for defections of individuals and develop Individual constituency papers, and contact with members of the an understanding of changes in electoral alignment. Sources Party’s policy committees and/or the Party Council, particularly include personal papers and newspapers; suggestions about how welcome. Ruth Fox, 7 Mulberry Court, Bishop’s Stortford, Herts to get hold of the papers of more obscure Liberal defectors CM23 3JW. welcome. Cllr Nick Cott, 1a Henry Street, Gosforth, Newcastle- upon-Tyne, NE3 1DQ; [email protected].
Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 21 Correction LettersLetters toto thethe Unfortunately one paragraph was incom- LettersLetters toto thethe pletely printed in J. Graham Jones’ article ‘Lloyd George and the Suffragettes at Llanystumdwy’ in the last issue of the Journal – our apologies to readers and to EditorEditor Dr Jones. The full paragraph, the last one on page of issue /, should have read as follows: Michael Meadowcroft As the new year – – dawned, One small inaccuracy in the excellent Wealth’ by-election victory during the feelings ran high and passions intensi- essay on Roderic Bowen (Journal /). war. At the election the retiring fied. Persistent conjecture ensued that Graham Jones states that Sir Rhys Common Wealth MP stood as the suffragette-inspired assassinations were Hopkin Morris’ success in Carmarthen- Labour candidate and was defeated by being planned against both Asquith shire in was ‘the only Labour loss in a Liberal National. and Lloyd George. The former, it was the whole of the United Kingdom’. It The other seat, Mile End, in what is rumoured, had only narrowly escaped was actually one of three such losses. now Tower Hamlets, was a genuine loss, death after a hatchet had been flung One, Eddisbury, was an artificial with the Communist candidate Phil into his carriage at Dublin. By the gain in that it had been long been a Piratin gaining the seat from the sitting spring of intense disillusionment Liberal, then Liberal National seat, Labour MP, Dan Frankel, who was a and mounting exasperation prevailed until it became the first ‘Common local GP and local government worthy. in the suffragette camp because of the perpetual postponement tactics employed by Asquith’s government from year to year: ‘Hope deferred maketh the heart sick’. Increasing QueriesQueries suffragette violence was in turn countered by retaliatory violence on the part of the state. In February Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst impressed upon In , the celebrated Hungarian public meetings which form so the WSPU that the argument of the nationalist, Louis Kossuth, visited distinctive a feature in the active life broken pane of glass was the most Britain and on May addressed a of free England. It so happened, also, valuable argument in politics, and meeting of Liberals in Bradford. Our on this occasion, that, in accordance hammers were indeed duly issued to enquirer wanted to know if Kossuth with a wish expressed by me in suffragettes who were despatched had been invited to England by the Bradford, as in other towns, the Town to smash the windows of selected party nationally or on local initiative. Council first passed a resolution in shops and offices in London’s West favour of neutrality, and then I End. Within days Mrs Pankhurst had Kossuth published Memories of my Exile received an invitation to be present been arrested, and sent to join hun- (translated by Ferencz Jausz), in at a meeting to be held on May th.’ dreds of other suffragettes in prison, London in . On p. , he writes: It emerges from this that Kossuth may while her daughter Christabel chose to ‘The inhabitants of Bradford have have set the whole thing up himself and, take refuge in Paris. Hunger strikes and always shown great kindness to me. reading around, we find, on p. , that forcible feeding ensued in a number of Mr. J. Mitchell, managing partner of Napoleon III had, as a condition of British prisons, while those suffragettes the Bradford branch of the large assistance, asked Kossuth to ensure the who remained free intensified the Manchester firm of Henry … lived neutrality of Britain in his forthcoming campaign of vandalism. Regular in Bradford. Mr. Mitchell was one of war with Austria. Pages – detail window-breaking was compounded my truest and most active English Kossuth’s strategy in Britain, including by occasional arson attacks. As yet friends. Whenever I delivered a his belief that, in spite of the British another Conciliation Bill was debated lecture, it was he who always secured government’s unprompted declaration in the Commons chamber during me a sympathetic audience at of neutrality, he would have to cam- March , an exasperated Lloyd Bradford. And whenever it was paign to strengthen the government’s George, still one of the ministers more necessary, in the interest of my resolve, ‘remembering that the Emperor sympathetic to the Suffragette cause, country, to carry on political Napoleon had decidedly declared that wrote dejectedly to his brother agitation, a simple word to him was he did not think he could trust to William: sufficient to organise, within two or England’s neutrality while the ministry three days, one of those monster of Lord Derby was in power’. (p. ). 16 Cited in Rover, op. cit., p. 166.
22 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 those who could not act for themselves, such as children, or women (and was also an early advocate of women’s suffrage), ReportReport recognised the case for state support for education, was a strong supporter of local self-government, and by the s began to recognise an important role for trade ‘Exchange goods, not bombs’ unions. He was an opponent of colonial- ism and – rarely for his time – British Fringe meeting, March 2002, with Anthony Howe, rule in India, and argued for the compul- David Dutton and Duncan Brack sory arbitration of international disputes. Popular support for the Crimean Report by Martin Ryder War shook his belief in the ability of the people to follow a rational path of self-interest, and he criticised the press he Liberal Democrat History Manchester in the s, became a for hoodwinking the public through Group’s spring meeting, successful calico printer. His views, bogus war scares. Against this back- T ‘Exchange goods, not bombs: shaped by the political economy of the ground, he began to recognise a Free trade, Liberalism and the Man- Scottish Enlightenment, the Anglo- greater role for national governments chester School’, took place in Man- American democratic tradition, and in the promotion of peace, and in chester, being hosted by the People’s the secular pacifism of the European negotiated a commercial treaty be- History Museum, in conjunction with Enlightenment., came to focus on tween Britain and France. This was to a its exhibition, ‘Reforming Manchester: what he saw as the misgovernment of certain extent a retreat from ‘no Liberals and the City’ – a particularly Britain by its aristocratic rulers, in foreign politics’, but it was a different appropriate setting for the discussion. particular through a foreign policy of kind of diplomacy; emulated in a Anthony Howe (LSE), David Dutton profligate military adventurism. ‘No succession of similar treaties, it can be (Liverpool University) and Duncan foreign politics’ was Cobden’s earliest seen as laying the early foundations of Brack (Royal Institute of International rallying cry: the free exchange of goods the European Common Market. Affairs) delivered a complementary set contained its own foreign policy in Although often criticised as a ‘little- of talks which, for the purposes of this leading to peace between nations Englander, peace-at-any-price’ politi- report, have been integrated into one. while at the same time maximising cian, he is more accurately seen as one The meeting was ably chaired by Patsy prosperity and reducing needless of the first serious practitioners of Calton MP. expenditure on armaments. internationalism; in one of his contem- As Duncan Brack argued, from the In the s Cobden extended his porary’s words, as a ‘Christian-love, campaign for the repeal of the Corn criticism of the state by beginning the exchange-of-cotton-goods’ interna- Laws in the s to the current great campaign for the repeal of the tionalist, in opposition to the alterna- debates around the reform of the Corn Laws, which he saw as another tive vision of Bismarck’s ‘exchange-of- World Trade Organisation (WTO), bastion of aristocratic self-interest, hard-knocks, blood-and-iron’ interna- political parties’ views of international distorting the natural order of eco- tional system. trade and, more broadly, Britain’s nomic development, raising the cost of On his death in , Cobden was relations with its neighbours overseas living, and reducing prosperity. Some widely recognised by continental have differed markedly, and have opponents attacked the campaign as Liberals as a model of a European helped to define their stance in the inimical to the interests of the workers, statesman. He inspired a generation of political spectrum. For a large part of as cheaper food would enable manufac- Liberal thinkers, including Gladstone its life, the fortunes of the Liberal Party turers to pay lower wages, but Cobden and Hobson in Britain and Bernstein in have been closely related to the always viewed repeal as improving the Germany, and shaped a domestic creed strength of popular feeling for the welfare of the working classes – a of political and economic reform. His liberalisation of international trade. successful connection which helped to views on foreign policy inspired further tie working class political support to the generations of idealists – as A. J. P. Taylor Liberal Party for decades. dubbed them, ‘trouble-makers’ – in ‘The school of Free trade, peace and reform re- their dissent from official foreign policy, Manchester’ mained Cobden’s watchwords through- a continuous strand in British radicalism This attachment had its origins in the out his career. At the heart of Manchester until the s. He was never simply a ‘Manchester School’ which, as Liberalism sat a drastic curtailment of Manchester manufacturer, but a free Anthony Howe argued, should be seen state power, primarily as a means of trader, an anti-imperialist a good as ‘the most authentic and British form curbing aristocratic misrule. But Cobden European, a lover of peace, and an early of Liberalism’. Its greatest exponent was never a pure advocate of laissez-faire prophet of globalisation. was Richard Cobden, who, arriving in – he accepted the need for legislation for Richard Cobden and his friend and
Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 23 ally John Bright converted the Liberal twentieth century, constitutional issues The Liberal leadership reacted in Party and the country to the cause of such as Home Rule for Ireland of horror, partly because they feared loss free trade. In , even after the repeal reform of the House of Lords were of the public identification of the party of the Corn Laws, there were still more proving less successful. Free trade, with free trade, but the critics struck a than a thousand dutiable articles in the however, still provided a unifying chord within the parliamentary party. British tariff. After Gladstone’s budget factor, not least because of the Con- Sir John Simon, Lloyd George’s main of (in what is generally recog- servative abandonment of this previ- critic, particularly over his closeness to nised as the first government of the ously shared commitment. Thus in the Labour Government, began to modern Liberal Party), only sixteen , Conservative Prime Minister question the ark of the Cobdenite remained. Free trade became a national Baldwin’s decision to call an election covenant, declaring, in , that he obsession; ‘like parliamentary represen- in search of a mandate for protection was not prepared to shut out from his tation or ministerial responsibility,’ achieved what Liberals themselves had mind the need for fiscal measures that commented The Times in , ‘not so failed to manage, in bringing together would not be required in more much a prevalent opinion as an article the warring Lloyd George and Asquith prosperous times, and arguing that the of national faith’. factions; the Liberal result was the limits of direct taxation had been Free trade remained an article of best of any inter-war election. reached and new sources of revenue Liberal faith for decades, even after it Ironically, however, the same issue were needed. In June , Simon and became somewhat harder to justify, as lay at the heart of the disastrous Liberal his followers resigned the Liberal whip British economic power weakened split of –, arguably even more and founded the ‘Liberal National’ towards the end of the nineteenth important than that of in explain- group. Although both the official party century. Their opponents in the ing the party’s eclipse. Although and the Simonites joined the National Conservative Party gradually became laissez-faire and free trade were often Government in the crisis of , the committed to ‘tariff reform’, a cause seen as virtually interchangeable, from Liberal Nationals steered a distinct taken up most strongly by the former at least the s onwards many course, in September signalling their radical leader Joseph Chamberlain; but Liberals were increasingly separating support for any measures the Govern- in the short term all this achieved was the two. Most notably, the New ment thought necessary to deal with one of the greatest electoral landslides Liberalism of the early twentieth the trade imbalance and staying in the of the century, in the Liberal victory of century recognised a strong case for cabinet when the Samuelite Liberals . Liberal candidates habitually the state to intervene in the workings resigned a year later over the Ottawa appeared on election platforms with of the economy. Indeed, Ramsay Muir Agreements establishing preferential two loaves of bread, contrasting the questioned whether Liberalism had tariffs for the Empire. Liberal ‘big loaf’ with the Tory ‘little ever been a laissez-faire philosophy, This split was of profound impor- loaf’ which would follow the imposi- arguing that state interventionism tance to the future of British Liberalism. tion of grain duties – and the Muse- began as early as the Liberal govern- David Dutton believed that the early um’s exhibition provided many other ment of , and most of the func- s saw an opportunity for the examples of the Liberal determination tions which the state assumed in the Liberals to turn the tide of electoral to identify with the cause of cheap economic field since had been due to decline, particularly in light of the food for the working classes. Liberal legislation. There were always a crushing Labour defeat in – but to few Liberals who were bitterly critical do this they needed unity, which the of any enlargement of the functions of conflict over free trade deprived them Free trade in the 1930s the state, but they were a minority. of. The split proved to be permanent, David Dutton took up the story from In the s, however, and against a until the Liberal Nationals finally fused the s, as free trade was becoming background of stubbornly high with the Conservatives after the almost the only cause with which an unemployment, some Liberals went election. The party’s division into two increasingly divided Liberal Party further and began to question the case factions sowed confusion in the minds could identify. (As Ramsay Muir put it for free trade. As Keynes argued in his of the electorate, and the Conservatives in , in frustration at Liberals’ address to the Liberal Summer School were able to use their Liberal National inability to cohere round a consistent in , ‘we have to invent new allies to proclaim their ‘liberal’ creden- set of principles, ‘It is at once the wisdom for the new age’, and by tials to the public, helping to capture the strength and the weakness of the he had accepted the case for increased bulk of former Liberal voters in seats Liberal Party that it consists of Liberals tariffs. Similarly, E. D. Simon saw the where the Liberals had no candidate in – that is to say, of people who insist Manchester School doctrine as inap- the knife-edge election. upon exercising their own freedom of propriate to the twentieth century, It was a matter of considerable irony judgement’.) when Britain was no longer the that the principle of free trade – almost, Liberal leaders – in particular workshop of the world, and at the by then, a definition of what it meant to Gladstone – had always proved skilful Summer School suggested a % be a British Liberal – was responsible for in using single issues to unify a very revenue tax on most imports (includ- splitting the party a century after the broad political church. But by the early ing food, though not raw materials). same issue had torn the Conservatives
24 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 apart over the Corn Laws. That fission other parties as trade liberalisation liberalisation over every other aspect of paved the way to the era of Liberal once again became the accepted faith. public policy, such as environmental supremacy in the mid nineteenth Ironically, the Liberal Party itself protection or development; and the century; and in turn, the Liberal divisions suffered from divisions over trade as its extreme inequalities of wealth between of ushered in a period of Conserva- parliamentary representation came to rich developed nations and the abject tive hegemony from which the Liberal rest increasingly in rural areas. After a poverty in much of the developing Party has still fully to recover. assembly vote for a policy of world. To a certain extent, these are the gradual abandonment of guaranteed problems of success: the removal of the markets and fixed prices for agricul- barriers to trade for which Liberals New challenges ture, Jeremy Thorpe seized the micro- campaigned for almost two centuries Duncan Brack took up the story after phone and proclaimed that he and has proceeded so far that it has unbal- . In December , the statesmen other candidates for rural seats would anced the international system. The who met at Bretton Woods, in the US, disown such an electorally damaging WTO is a much more powerful to plan the post-war world were position. In moves to delete the institution than other international determined to avoid a repeat of the word ‘unilateral’ from a motion on free organisations, such as those dealing with disastrous trade wars of the s. The trade ended in uproar. The the environment, or development, and establishment of new international manifesto, however, still demanded the most governments afford a higher institutions – the United Nations, the dismantling of all protectionism within priority to trade liberalisation than to World Bank, the International Mon- one parliament. The moral argument other policy goals. The purpose of the etary Fund – brought with it the hope for trade was still powerful; the debate within the party currently under of effective regulation of international manifesto ended with the slogan: way should be to suggest ways in which economics and an equitable interna- ‘exchange goods, not bombs’. In the international system can be tional system to govern the relation- the Liberals became the first party to rebalanced, seeing trade liberalisation as ships of nations. argue for British participation in the just one part of a wider approach to the Although at this point the Liberal Common Market: the Cobdenite spread of growth and prosperity. Party itself was almost irrelevant, vision of trade building links between It is notable that in every major debate Liberal thinkers still helped to shape peoples was an important factor, over free trade over the last two centu- the future. John Maynard Keynes overriding concerns over potential ries, Liberals and Conservatives have (building on the ideas of James Meade) European protectionism against the ended up on different sides; Liberals have was largely responsible for the plans for rest of the world. The EC’s Common consistently supported the open, interna- the establishment of an International Agricultural Policy resolved the tional option. Yet, as Duncan Brack Trade Organisation alongside the argument within the party between argued, this was never a primarily World Bank and IMF. Although the trade and farming, until the CAP’s economic argument; Liberals never proposal was vetoed by the US, its own contradictions forced reform in fought for the reduction of tariffs as an ‘provisional’ substitute – the General the s. end in itself. As the record shows, the Agreement on Tariffs and Trade The conclusion of the Uruguay political justifications for the removal of (GATT), originally a small part of the Round, and the transformation of the trade barriers were what inspired the ITO – was able, over the following GATT into the WTO in have campaign for free trade: the extension of forty years, to coordinate successive shifted the grounds of debate once opportunity to every individual, every rounds of tariff reductions, culminating again. The WTO has come to be seen as enterprise, and every country, no matter in the Uruguay Round, concluded in the prime agent of all of the negative how small; and the building of relation- , and its own transformation into aspects of ‘globalisation’: the spread of a ships between peoples and nations, the WTO. As on so many other issues, global culture and the stamping out of pulling communities together rather Liberal ideas came to be adopted by local diversity; the elevation of trade than driving them apart.
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Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 25 Speech Tony Little introduces a speech made by Richard Cobden near the climax of the campaign to abolish the Corn Laws. ‘‘ExplodingExploding thethe delusiondelusion ofof protection’protection’ Richard Cobden on agricultural distress (House of Commons, 13 March 1845)
aws regulating the export and import of His power lay ‘in his knowledge of the subject, his grains for the benefit of British farmers date ability to impart that knowledge intelligibly to his L back at least to . The Napoleonic wars hearers; his clear acute, logical, comprehensive mind; caused a major disturbance to trade and to alleviate and last though not least, in his thorough honesty the decline in prices that followed good harvests in and sincerity of purpose’. Cobden himself recog- and the slump which followed Waterloo, Parlia- nised that it would not be his eloquence that demol- ment enacted the Corn Law, excluding almost ished the Corn Laws. ‘I know it as well as though I all imports until domestic wheat prices reached a were in their hearts. It is this: they are all afraid that specified level. The amended Corn Law of sub- this corn law cannot be maintained – no not a rag of stituted a sliding scale of import duties. it, during a period of scarcity prices, of a famine sea- Despite the industrial revolution, agriculture re- son, such as we had in ’, ’, and ’.’ mained the biggest single employer and land provided The threat, which quickly became reality, of fam- the fortunes of the ruling class. Agitation against the ine in Ireland caused by the failure of the potato crop Corn Laws was not just striking at outmoded legisla- in the autumn of finished the corn laws and tion already refuted by economists such as Adam with them Peel’s Conservative government. However Smith and David Ricardo. It was the heart of the it was Cobden’s campaigning which had made their struggle for primacy waged by the new industrial demise inevitable. Commenting on the speech in classes, which also encompassed the battles for fran- March , Peel is reported to have said to Sidney chise extension and reform of government finances. Herbert ‘you must answer this for I cannot.’ Richard Cobden (-) spearheaded the cru- sade for free trade; his political beliefs and career are Richard Cobden, as he had the previous year, presented a well summarised in the summary of Anthony Howe’s petition and moved for a select committee to inquire into talk to the History Group meeting in March (see pags the causes and extent of the alleged existing agricultural –). In , together with John Bright and five distress, and into the effects of legislative protection upon the Manchester merchants, he founded an anti-corn law interests of land-owners, tenant-farmers, and farm labourers. association, the first of many which came together in The motion was opposed for the government by Sidney to form the Anti-Corn Law League. The call for Herbert on the basis that such inquiries never led to any cheap bread ensured popular support but it was the useful result, and was lost by votes to . organisational skills of the industrialists who saw pro- tection as the greatest obstacle to expanding trade [The object of the motion] is the appointment of a which promoted the League above other populist Select Committee to inquire into the condition of agitations. In Cobden took his campaign into the agricultural interests, with a view to as certain parliament as MP for Stockport. how far the law affecting the importation of agricul- To contemporaries, ‘his manner’ was ‘not espe- tural produce has affected those interests. cially attractive’, nor his ‘voice particularly musical’ Now, that there is distress among the farmers I pre- but ‘all the wandering members’ rushed to hear him. sume cannot be established upon higher authority
26 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 than that of those who professed to be Trade (Mr. Gladstone) stated in reply to ‘the farmer’s friends’. I learn from those him, that the last corn law had been hon. Gentlemen who have been paying most successful in its operation, and he their respects to the Prime Minister, that took great credit to the government for the agriculturists are in a state of great the steadiness of price obtained under embarrassment and distress. I find one it. As these things are so often disputed, gentleman from Norfolk, Mr. Hudson, it was as well to give the quotation. The stating that the farmers in Norfolk are right hon. gentleman said, paying their rents out of capital; while Was there any man who had sup- Mr. Turner, from Devonshire, assured the ported the law in the year who right hon. Baronet (Sir R. Peel) that one could honestly say that he had been half of the smaller farmers in that county disappointed in its working? Could are insolvent, and the other half rapidly anyone point out a promise or a pre- hastening to the same condition, and diction hazarded in the course of the that unless some remedial measures are protracted debates upon the measure, adopted by the House, they will be which promise or prediction had Richard Cobden (1804–65) plunged into irretrievable poverty. These been subsequently falsified? accounts from those counties agree with quiry in a Committee; and I am prepared what I hear from other sources, and I Now, let the House recollect that the to bring evidence before it, to show that will put it to hon. Members opposite right hon. Gentleman was speaking farmers are labouring under great evils – whether the condition of the farmers in when wheat was s d.; but wheat is at evils that I can connect with the Corn Suffolk, Wiltshire, and Hampshire, is any present s (Hear, hear.) The right hon. Laws, though they appear to be altogether better. I will put it to county Members Baronet at the head of the government differently caused. (Hear, hear.) whether, looking to the whole of the said that his legislation on the subject south of England, from the confines of had nothing to do with wheat being Nottinghamshire to the Land’s-End, the s.; but how is the difficulty to be got ‘Notorious want of farmers are not in a state of embarrass- over, that the head of the Board of Trade, capital’ ment – whether, as a rule, that is not nine months ago, claimed merit to the The first great evil they labour under is a their condition? Then, according to government for having kept up wheat to want of capital. No one can deny it; it is every precedent in the house, this is a fit that price? (Cheers.) These discrepancies notorious. I do not say it disparagingly of and proper time to bring forward this in the Government itself, and between the farmers. The farmers of this country resolution; and I will venture to say, that the Government and its supporters, ren- are just of the same race as the rest of if the Duke of Buckingham had a seat in dered it more necessary that this ‘protec- Englishmen, and, if placed in the same this House he would do what he, as Lord tion’ should be inquired into. situation, would be as successful men of Chandos, did – move such a resolution. I must ask, what does it mean? We business and traders and manufacturers (Hear, hear.) have prices now at s. I have been as their countrymen; but it is notorious, The distress of the farmer being ad- speaking within the last week to the as a rule, that they are deficient in capital. mitted, the next question that arises is highest authority in England, one often Now, can any business be carried on what is the cause of this distress. Now, I quoted in this House, and I learned successfully where there is not adequate feel the greater necessity for a commit- from him that, with another favourable capital? (Hear, hear.) Hon. Gentlemen ac- tee of inquiry, because I find a great dis- harvest, it was quite likely that wheat quainted with farming will probably ad- crepancy of opinion as to the cause. would be at s. (Hear, hear.) What mit that £ an acre, on arable land, is a One right hon. Gentleman has said that does this legislation mean, if we are to competent capital for carrying on the the distress is local, and moreover that it have prices fluctuating from s. to business of farming successfully; but I does not arise from legislation; while s.? (Cheers.) Can this be prevented have made many inquiries in all parts of the hon. Member for Dorsetshire (Mr. by legislation? That is the question. the kingdom, and I gave it as my decided Bankes) declared that it is general, and There is a rank delusion spread abroad conviction, that at the present moment that it does arise from legislation. (Hear, among the farmers (hear, hear); and it is the farmer’s capital does not average £ hear.) I am at a loss indeed to under- the duty of the House to dispel that de- an acre, taking the whole of England stand what this protection to agricul- lusion, and to institute an inquiry into south of the Trent, and including all ture means, because I find such contra- the matter. (Hear.) Wales. Though, of course, there are ex- dictory accounts given in this House by But there is a difference of opinion on ceptions in every county – men of large the promoters of it. For instance, nine my own side of the House, and some capital – men farming their own land – I months ago the hon. Member for Wol- Members, representing great and power- am convinced this is true as a rule, and I verhampton (Mr. Villiers) brought for- ful interests, think the farmers are suffer- am prepared to back my opinion by wit- ward his motion for the repeal of the ing because they have this legislative pro- nesses before a committee. (Hear, hear.) Corn Laws; and the right hon. Gentle- tection. This difference of opinion makes Here, then, is a tract of country, compre- man then at the head of the Board of the subject a fit and proper one for in- hending probably ,, of cultiva-
Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 27 ble acres, and £,, more capital But here I have to quote authorities, But there was still higher authority. At is wanted for its cultivation. and I shall quote some of the highest the late meeting at Liverpool, Lord What is the meaning of ‘farming consideration with the opposite side of Stanley declared: capital’? It means more manuring, more the House. I will just state the opinion I say, and as one connected with the labour, more cattle, larger crops. (Hear.) of the hon. Member for Berkshire land I feel myself bound to say it, that But let us fancy a country in which (Mr.Pusey), delivered at the meeting of a landlord has no right to expect any there is a deficiency of all these things the Suffolk Agricultural Society. That great and permanent improvement of which ought to be there, and then guess hon. Gentleman said: his land by the tenant, unless that ten- what must be the condition of the la- He knew this country well, and he ant be secured the repayment of his bourers, wanting employment and food. knew that there was not a place from outlay, not by the personal character (Hear, hear.) It may be said, that capital Plymouth to Berwick in which the or honour of his landlord, but by a se- would be there if it were a profitable in- landlords might not make improve- curity which no casualties can inter- vestment. I admit it, and thus the ques- ments; but when the tenant was short fere with – the security granted him tion comes – how is it, that in a country of money, the landlord generally would by the terms of a lease for years. overflowing with capital, where there is be short of money too. (Hear.) But he a plethora in every other business, where would tell them how to find funds. every other pursuit is abounding with There were many districts where there money, when money is going to France ‘A trap for unwary men’ was a great superfluity not only of use- for railroads, and to Pennsylvania for Not only does the want of security pre- less but of mischievous timber; and if bonds, connecting the Atlantic with the vent capital from flowing to the soil, but they would cut that down which ex- Pacific by canals, and diving to the bot- it actually hinders the improvement of cluded the sun and the air, and fed on tom of Mexican mines for investment, it the land by those who already occupy it. the soil, and sell it, they would benefit yet finds no employment in the most at- There are many tenants who could im- the farmer by cutting it down, and they tractive of all spots – the soil of this prove their land if they were made se- would benefit the farmer and labourer country itself! (Hear, hear.) cure; they either have capital themselves, too by laying out the proceeds in Admitting the evil, with all its train of or their friends can advance it; but with underdraining the soil. (Cheers.) There fearful consequences, what is the cause the want of leases, with the want of se- was another mode in which they might of it? There can be no doubt whatever – curity they are deterred from laying out find money. I knew that on some prop- it is admitted by the highest authorities – their money. Everything is kept ‘from erties a large sum was spent in the pres- that the cause is this, – there is not secu- year to year.’ (Hear, hear.) It is impossible ervation of game. (Cheers) It was not at rity for capital on the land. Capital to farm properly unless money is in- all unusual for the game to cost £ shrinks instinctively from insecurity of vested in it for more than a year. A man or £ a year; and if this were given tenure, and we have not in England that ought to begin farming with a prospect up, the money would employ able- security which will warrant men of of waiting eight years before he can see a bodied labourers in improving the capital investing their money in the soil. return for what he must do in the first property. (Cheers.) This was another (Hear, hear.) Is it not a matter worthy of year or two. Tenants, therefore, are pre- fund for the landlords of England to consideration how far this insecurity of vented by their landlords from carrying benefit the labourers and the farmer at tenure is bound up with the ‘protection’ on cultivation properly. They are made the same time. system of which hon. Members opposite servile and dependent, disinclined to im- are so enamoured? Suppose it could be Again, at the Colchester agricultural provement, afraid to let the landlord see shown that they are in a vicious circle; meeting: that they could improve their farms, lest that they have made politics of Corn he should pounce on them for an in- Mr. Fisher Hobbes was aware that a Laws; that they wanted voters, to retain crease of rent … spirit of improvement was abroad. Corn Laws; that they think the Corn Here is a little evidence of the same Much was said about the tenant Laws a great mine of wealth, and there- kind that is to be gathered from the farmers doing more. Indeed they fore will have dependent tenants, that meeting of the South Devon Agricul- might do more: the soil of country they may have votes at elections, and so tural Association, where the Rev. C. was capable of greater production; if retain these laws. Why, if they will have Johnson said, he said one fourth more he would be dependent voters, they cannot have men within compass. (Hear, hear.) But that He knew it had been thought that of spirit and of capital. (Cheers.) Then could not be done by tenant farmers landlords were ready to avail them- their policy reacts upon them; if they alone; they must have confidence selves of such associations, on account have not men of skill and capital, they (loud cheers.); it must be done by leases of the opportunity it afforded them cannot have protection and employment (renewed cheers) – by draining – by ex- for diving into their tenants affairs for the labourer; and then comes round tending the length of fields – by and opening their eyes. (Hear.) An in- the vicious termination – pauperism, knocking down hedge-rows, and stance of this occurred to him at a re- poor-rates, county-rates, and all the evils clearing away trees which now cent ploughing match, where he met from which they are asking the Prime shielded the corn. a respectable agriculturist whom he Minister to relieve them. (Cheers.)
28 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 well knew, and asked him if he was and so in proportion for a less quantity agricultural labourers at the present going to it. He said, ‘No.’ ‘Why?’ Be- of the said land, which the tenant shall time; but I feel bound to say that whilst cause he did not approve of such let off or underlet; such sums to be paid the farmers are in a worse position than things. This ‘why’ produced another on demand after every breech, and in they have been for the last years, I ‘why,’ and the man gave a reason why. default of payment to be considered as believe the agricultural labourers have Suppose he sent a plough and man, reserved rent, and levied by distress and passed the winter, though it was a five with two superior horses; the land- sale as rent in arrear may be levied and months winter and severe, with less suf- lord at once would say, ‘This man is raised; and to do six days boon team- fering from distress than the previous doing too well on my estate,’ and in- work whenever called upon; and to winters. I mention this because it is a crease the rent. (Hear.) keep for the landlord one dog, and one remarkable proof of the degree in cock or hen; and to make no marlpit which a low price of food is beneficial I will ask the landed gentry of England without the landlord’s consent first ob- to the labouring classes. I can demon- what state of things is this, that the tained in writing; after which the same strate that in the manufacturing dis- farmer dares not appear to have a good is to be properly filled in; nor to allow tricts whenever food is dear wages are pair of horses, or to derive four quarters any inmate to remain on the premises low; and that whenever food is low, where the land had formerly produced after six days’ notice, nor to keep or feed wages rise. That the manufacturers can only three? (‘Hear, hear,’ ‘Oh, oh!’ and any sheep, except such as are used for prove. Then I stated it as my own opin- ironical cheers.) Hon. Members cheer, the consumption of the family. (Cheers ion, that the agricultural labourers are but I ask is it not so? (Hear, hear.) I must and laughter) in a better state than they were in previ- say that the condition of things indi- ous winters; but does not that show that cated by those two quotations brings What is such an instrument as this? I the agricultural labourers having only the farmer very near down in point of will tell the House what it is. It is a trap just so much wages as will find them in servility to the ryot of the East. (‘Hear, for unwary men – a barrier against subsistence derived benefit from the hear,’ and murmurs.) The one takes the capital and intelligence and a fetter to plenty of the first necessaries of life? utmost care to conceal the amount of any free man. (Cheers) No one can farm Their wages do not rise in the same his produce; the other suffers the basti- under such a lease. (Hear, hear) The hon. proportion as the price of food rises, nado rather than tell how much corn is member for Shoreham (Mr C. Barrell) but then neither do their wages fall in grown. The tenant, indeed, is not afraid cheered: but if hon. Members would the same proportion as the price of of the bastinado, but he is kept in fear of look into their own leases, though there food falls. Therefore, in all cases the ag- a distress for rent. (Hear.) might not be the ‘cocks and hens and ricultural labourers are in a better state This is the state of the tenant farm- dogs’ and probably not the ‘team work,’ when food is low than when it is high. ing without a lease, and in England a they will find almost as great absurdi- Now, I am bound to state, that what- lease is the exception and not the rule. ties. These documents are generally ever is the condition of the agricultural But even sometimes, when there is a taken from old, dusty, antediluvian re- labourer, I believe the farmer is not re- lease or agreement, the case is still mains that some lawyer’s clerk drew sponsible for that condition while he is worse, for the clauses and covenants are from a pigeonhole, and copied out for placed as at present. I have heard many of such an obsolete and preposterous every incoming tenant; something that exhortations to the farmer that he must character, that he will defy any man to had been in existence perhaps for employ more labour. I believe the carry on the business of farming prop- years. You give men no credit for being farmer is very unjustly required to do erly under them. (Hear, hear.) I will just able to discover any improvements; in this. The farmer stands between the read a passage from a Cheshire lease - fact, you tie them down from improv- landlord and the suffering peasantry. It is an actual lease - to show in what sort of ing; you go upon assumption that there rather hard in the landlord to point the way the tenant farmer is bound down:- will be no improvement, and do your farmer out as the cause of the want of best to prevent it. (Hear, hear.) To pay the landlord £ for every stat- employment for labour – as the man to ute acre of ground, and so in propor- be marked. (Hear, hear.) Lord Hardwicke … [Cobden then argued for improved sys- tion for a less quantity, that shall be con- had lately made an address to the labour- tems of leases, on the grounds that with greater verted into tillage, or used contrary to ers of Haddenham, in which he said, security of tenure, farmers would invest more the appointment before made; and £ in the land. However, government fixing of Conciliate your employers, and if they for every hundredweight of hay, thrave the price of corn would always induce farmers do not perform their duty to you and of straw, load of potatoes, or cartload of simply to argue for higher corn prices as the themselves address yourselves to the manure, that shall be sold or taken from primary means of paying their rents.] … landlords, and I assure you that you the premises during the term; and £ will find us ready to urge our own for every tree fallen, cut down, or de- tenants to the proper cultivation of stroyed, cropped, lopped, or topped, or ‘You cannot employ your their farms and, consequently, to the willingly suffered so to be; and £, for own labourers in the just employment of the labourer. every servant or other person so hired agricultural districts’ or admitted as to gain a settlement in That is the whole question. I think that I have alluded to the condition of the the township; and £ per statute acre, it is the landlords and not the employers
Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 29 who are in fault. The landlords have ab- have wiser heads to lead you than your You lately heard the right hon. Bar- solute power in the country. There is no own, or you would shortly be in pre- onet at the head of the Government say doubt about it – they can legislate for cisely the same situation they are in Ire- that if he could restore protection it the benefit of the labourers, or of them- land; but with this increase to the diffi- would not benefit the agricultural inter- selves, as they please. If the results of culty of that situation, that they do con- est. Is that your belief? Or are you acting their legislation have failed to secure trive to maintain the rights of property on your own convictions, or performing due advantages to the labourer, they there with the aid of the English Ex- your duty in this House, by following the have no right to call on the farmers to chequer and , bayonets; but bring right hon. Baronet into the lobby when do their duty, and furnish the labourers your own country to the same condi- he refuses an enquiry and investigation with the means of support. I lately saw a tion, and where would be your rents. into the condition of the very men who labourer’s certificate at Stowupland, in (Cheers.) send you up here? With mere politicians I Suffolk, placed over the chimneypiece What then do you propose to do? have no right to hope to succeed; but give in a labourer’s cottage. It was this:- Nothing this year to benefit the great me a committee and I will explode the mass of the agricultural population. You delusions of agricultural protection West Suffolk Agricultural Association, admit the farmer’s capital is diminished; (cheers); I will produce such a mass of evi- established in , for the advance- that he is in a worse state than he was. dence, and call authorities so convincing, ment of agriculture, and the encour- How to increase the confidence of capi- that when the blue book shall be sent out agement of industry, and skill, and talism in the farmer’s power of retrieving I am convinced protection will not live good conduct among labourers and themselves – how this is to be done is two years. (Cheers.) servants in husbandry. President, the the question. I cannot believe you are Protection is a very convenient vehi- Duke of Grafton, Lord Lieutenant of going to make this a political game. It cle for politicians; the cry of protection the county. This is to certify that a was well said that the last election was an won the last election; and politicians prize of £ was awarded to William agricultural election; and there are looked to secure honours, emoluments, Birch, aged , labourer, of the parish members sitting behind the right hon. places by it; but you, the gentry of Eng- of Stowupland, in West Suffolk, Sep- Baronet; that is the proof of it. land, are not sent up for such objects. Is, tember , , for having brought Don’t quarrel with me because I then, that old, tattered and torn flag to up nine children without relief, ex- have imperfectly stated my case; I have be kept up for the politicians, or will cept when flour was very dear (hear, done my best (hear, hear); I ask what you come forward and declare that you hear) and for having worked on the you have done? (Cheers) I tell you this are ready to inquire into the state of the same farm years. (Signed) Robert protection, as it is called, has been a fail- agricultural interests? I cannot think Rushbrooke (a laugh), chairman. ure. It failed when wheat was s a that the gentlemen of England can be After a severe winter, with little em- quarter, and you know what was the content to be made mere drumheads to ployment to be had, I congratulate the condition of the farmer in . It be sounded by the Prime Minister of country that we have fewer agricultural failed when wheat was s, and you England (cheers) – to be made to emit labourers in the workhouses, and fewer know what was the condition of the notes, but to have no articulate sounds pining from want, than in former years; farmer in ; and now it has failed of their own. (Cheers.) but a bad case at the best is the condi- again, with the last amendments you You, gentlemen of England, the high tion of the agricultural labourer, and have made in the law, for you have ad- aristocracy of England, your forefathers you have to look out before it is too late mitted what is the condition of the ag- led my forefathers, you may lead us how you are to employ him. The last ricultural tenantry. What then is the again if you choose. But, though you, census shows you cannot employ your plan you propose? longer than any other aristocracy, have own labourers in the agricultural dis- I hope this question was not made a kept your power, while the battlefield tricts. How then are you to employ pretence – a political game – of at the and the hunting field were the tests of them? You say, there are too many of last election; that you have not come up manly vigour; you have not done as the them. That is an evil which will press as mere politicians. There are politicians noblesse of France or the hilalgos of on you more and more every year; in this House who look with ambition – Madrid; you have been Englishmen, what then are you to do? and probably in their case it is a justifi- not wanting in courage on any call. But able ambition – to the high offices of the this is a new age – the age of social ad- State; there may be men here who by vancement, not of feudal sports; you ‘What then do you years’ devotion to politics have been belong to a mercantile age. You cannot propose to do?’ pressed into a groove in which it is diffi- have the advantage of commercial rents Are you, gentry of England, to sit with cult for them to avoid going forward, and retain your feudal privileges too. your arms folded and propose nothing? I and are, may be, maintaining the same But if you identify yourselves with the am only here tonight because you have course against their convictions; I make spirit of the age you may yet do well; proposed nothing. We all know that the allowance for them; but the great body for I tell you that the people of the allotment system has been taken up; it is of you came up not as politicians but as country look to their aristocracy with a a plaything; it is a failure (Hear, hear), and friends of the agricultural interest; and to it has been well for some of you that you you I now say what are you going to do? concluded on page 35
30 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 Nevertheless the Queen’s stubborn- ness paid off and Henry Ponsonby undertook the diplomatically impos- ReviewsReviews sible task of interpreting the Queen’s not always practical wishes to govern- ments and government’s wishes to a Queen not always focused on the day-to-day business of statesmanship. A well-connected Liberal in the Kuhn is an equal opportunities biographer. Chapters on Henry court of Queen Victoria Ponsonby are succeeded by those on Mary. This gives a more rounded William Kuhn: Henry & Mary Ponsonby (Duckworth, portrait with greater weight to family 2002; pp302) life and a wider range of Victorian preoccupations than is normal in a Reviewed by Tony Little political biography, but he is handi- capped on two fronts by the material. Firstly, while his correspondence with ueen Victoria reigned for so royal family in the s and s her has largely survived, fewer of her long that it is inevitable that confirms that Albert had no intention letters have endured. Secondly, and Q the constitution developed of the monarchy standing outside the almost inevitably for a Victorian and changed under her sometimes political and diplomatic process – he couple, he had more opportunities for unamused glare. We tend to focus on wanted the monarch to influence an active life than she, despite her the extension of the franchise and the policy, not party. His premature death efforts to the contrary. power of the premier within the created a vacuum. The Queen, in her Both were born to Whig families. cabinet as the significant constitu- grief, withdrew from public ceremo- Henry Ponsonby, the son of a veteran tional innovations. Occasionally it is nial and found that she had been of Waterloo and the grandson of an worthwhile considering the degree to over-dependent on her consort for Earl of Bessborough, was born in which constitutional change impacted holding her ministers to account. on Corfu where his father commanded on the monarchy itself. Less than It is into this gap that the private the British garrison. Mary Bulteel, the thirty years before Victoria came to secretary was required to step. It is no granddaughter of Earl Grey on her the throne, George III felt able to take accident that British ministerial titles mother’s side, was born in the year his executive decisions. George IV resonate with Secretary of State for reform act passed into law. Inevitably, manoeuvred to keep the Whigs out of this or that. Originally that what was Henry Ponsonby was destined for the power and William IV, Victoria’s the role entailed, and before George army and Mary for marriage and predecessor, committed no constitu- III, there was no separate private family. For him escape from destiny tional outrage in dismissing the Whigs secretary to the monarch. Even then, came through the offer to the young in . Yet by the end of Victoria’s Kuhn argues, the role was made reign, while she retained the power of necessary only by the King’s physical selection of a prime minister in some incapacity to read and write state circumstances (as does our current documents. At intervals over the next Queen), she was unable to resist three reigns, ministers, particularly Gladstone’s resumption of the pre- Whig ministers, resisted the continua- miership in or , despite her tion of the post, arguing that it marked distaste and reluctance. combined an excess of power without The keys to this withering in parliamentary accountability. Under Victoria’s political role are her mar- Melbourne, the Queen was so much riage to Prince Albert and his death. in the company of the prime minister The Prince Consort set out to rescue that a secretary was unnecessary and, the young Queen from her over- after her marriage, Albert undertook reliance on Melbourne. Kuhn argues the role. Even when Albert died, first that he sought to strengthen the Palmerston and then Russell argued monarchy by creating an independ- against official recognition of the post ence from the political parties and though unofficially making cabinet setting an example of moral rectitude. documents available to the equerry/ Even the slightest exposure to the Keeper of the Privy Purse who relations between Palmerston and the unofficially managed a private office.
Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 31 officer to be the private secretary to rather than promotions won on merit. until and remained active, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, his In principle the measure had the debating with H. G. Wells on Fabian- uncle Lord Bessborough, in the s. support of both front benches, but in ism and making contributions to The After Bessborough’s death he served practice it was impossible to carry and Nineteenth Century on literary topics his successors, largely cut off from the after the Lords rejected the bill in and the role of women in society. impact of the Irish famine. Service in , the royal prerogative was The politics of the Victorian court Ireland drew him to the attention of brought into play. When Disraeli have probably received less attention the Prince Consort and with the succeeded Gladstone in , than they deserve. The Ponsonbys exception of a short interval in the Ponsonby found himself increasingly were a central part of that court for all Crimea he remained attached to the sidelined, but the Queen took a of their married lives. Their corre- Court. considerably greater interest in what spondence throws an interesting Mary struggled harder against her was being done in her name. Tradi- sidelight on the struggle between the destiny. When young she pursued tionally, this is attributed to Disraeli’s Queen and her later Liberal ministers. religion with a passionate intensity laying on the flattery with a trowel And so it is disappointing to be forced which led initially to thoughts of a (‘We authors, Ma’am’) but Kuhn to conclude that this book lets the vocation in an Anglican religious argues that Disraeli also played up her reader down. community. Her confused feelings led power and indispensability, though For this, I believe that there are two her to break off an engagement with always with an air of sarcasm that principal reasons. The author does not (Sir) William Harcourt, later Ponsonby, though few others, appears trust his sources and he does not trust Gladstone’s Chancellor of the Ex- to have noticed. Ponsonby’s opposi- the reader. He seems unable to resist chequer, and left her available for tion to Dizzy’s Royal Titles Bill, the temptation to quote from a letter marriage to Henry Ponsonby. If which made the Queen Empress of without then repeating the substance Henry’s politics were Whiggish/ India, increased his isolation at Court of its contents in his own words rather Gladstonian, Mary’s were more and led to the development of an than allowing the quotations to radical. Naturally, she took up wom- alternative system of communication substantiate his case. Since he is based, en’s suffrage and education. She was a with the premier using the Ladies In at least part-time, in Carthage College pioneer supporter of Girton and of Waiting – a system which played to in the US, he may be writing prima- allowing women students to qualify as the Queen’s convenience and rily for an American audience, which doctors. She worked for the Society Disraeli’s skills. could explain a higher degree of for the Promotion of Employment of By the end of Disraeli’s premier- explanation of aspects of British Women. Children were a distraction ship, the Queen was a confirmed, if history than would generally be from this work but she remained undeclared, Tory and so she remained assumed for a British audience. actively engaged in political debate, until the end of her reign. Neverthe- Nevertheless, he appears to have tending towards socialism in her later less, the return of Gladstone to succumbed to the temptation to cram life. She contributed to one of the government, however unwelcome to in every piece of research he has higher brow Victorian journals. the Queen, rescued Ponsonby from conducted. For example, a reference Darwin’s theories and Henry’s irrelevance. Once more he was a full to Lord Clarendon, the Victorian Arminianism wore down some of her participant in the interpretation of the foreign secretary, appears to require a religious enthusiasm and while she wishes of the government and an potted biography of Clarendon the pursued a friendship with George ameliorator of the increasingly Stuart statesman and historian, though Eliot in an effort to assuage the difficult relations between Victoria the Victorian Clarendon comes from a doubts created, she never lost the and Gladstone which reached one separate creation of the peerage. A appreciation of the beauty of Anglican nadir with the death of Gordon at reference to ‘theatrical royalty’ leads to services. Kuhn makes much of Mary Khartoum and a second with Home an unconnected diversion into a Ponsonby’s friendships with women, Rule, perceived by Victoria as the potted history of the theatre and the such as the composer Ethel Smyth, beginning of the destruction of the role of the Lord Chamberlain. Occa- and with doomed younger men, such British Empire. sionally, as in the paragraph on St as Everard Primrose, half suggesting a Ponsonby did not long outlive the Theresa’s non-existent martyrdom, sexual element that to this reviewer retirement of Gladstone, dying of a this leads to error. Underneath these does not seem justified and which stroke in . His tact and loyalty irritations struggle both the life of an probably reflects more Victorian use made him a success in the smooth interesting couple and a sidelight on of language and sentiment than transfer of further power from the the development of the constitution. repressed lust. monarch to the politicians. His sense A book to borrow, not buy. As private secretary, Henry was of of humour allowed him to cope with assistance to Gladstone in the aboli- the symbols and ceremonies indistin- Tony Little is Chair of the Liberal tion of the system by which army guishable from monarchy in both Democrat History Group. commissions were bought and sold public and private. Mary survived
32 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 ment with Hitler were set aside. He is convincing in describing how Churchill ‘And some have greatness thrust must have realised that in resisting Hitler he was consigning the concept of upon them’ Empire, for which he had fought so hard in the thirties, to the scrapheap – and yet Roy Jenkins: Churchill (Macmillan, 2001 hbk, 2002 did so unhesitatingly. Possibly over- influenced by Alanbrooke’s diaries, pbk; pp1002) Jenkins becomes too involved in the Reviewed by Sam Crooks strategic issues surrounding the military conduct of the war, although he does convey well the sense in which after n the view of Roy Jenkins, that of see all his faults, and the rest of your life it ceased to be Churchill’s war. El many others, and certainly his you spend in discovering his virtues’ – is Alamein was the turning point – it was own, Winston Churchill was a great cited to illustrate the bumptiousness and the last purely British victory. That wider I – largely American – victory which had man. Jenkins goes so far as to say that he self-regard at this time that so many regards him as ‘the greatest human found unpleasant. Jenkins relates become inevitable from onwards being ever to occupy Downing St’, Churchill’s astonishing literary output Churchill was to enjoy much less as age edging out Gladstone, his last bio- ( books in years, and an income and fatigue took their toll. graphical subject, from that position. At from his journalism of up to £, Surprisingly the power of Churchill’s one level this type of ranking is more p.a. at today’s prices) with his capacity to oratory receives less attention than it akin to the authors of and All That, argue his case with colleagues through deserves. Asked what Churchill did to but at another it reflects Geoffrey personally authored memoranda much win the war, Clement Atlee replied that Elton’s comment that he inclined ‘to more effectively than they. That output he had talked about it. We forget in judge all historians by their opinion of was largely historical; hence the emphasis retrospect that up until the invasion of Winston Churchill: whether they can on the concepts of nation and progress Russia there was no certainty that see that no matter how much better the that informed so much of Churchill’s Hitler would lose the war, and indeed details – often damaging – of man and thought and speeches. Jenkins places quite a lot of evidence to the contrary. career become known he still remains, Churchill firmly in the Whig tradition, Yet, in Ed Murrow’s words, from quite simply, a great man’. describing how his interest in social Churchill single-handedly mobilised Jenkins is well aware of the ‘details’ – reform – albeit well founded in noblesse the English language and sent it to war this is by no means an uncritical oblige – persisted throughout Asquith’s to persuade the collective will of a biography. He brings few, if any, new administration regardless of his depart- nation that defeat was unthinkable and facts to Churchill’s life, relying mostly mental responsibilities. victory inevitable. on Martin Gilbert, other biographies, By contrast the book falters in the The post-war book is disappointing diaries, and memoirs, Hansard, and twenties and thirties. One senses that and shows some signs – for example the Churchill’s own publications and Jenkins is less at home both with the lists of travel itineraries – of having been articles. But his long experience as a period and the Conservative Party. He is written in a hurry. A judgement that politician give him an empathy both for dutifully critical but less insightful than the political process and for the chances before of Churchill’s support for lost of event and personality that inform the causes such as the Gold Standard, the relations between individuals. He is also British Raj and Edward VIII. And he sensibly non-judgemental about the misses the chance to dwell on Churchill realities of political life. He logs, for as an individual – the thirties in particular example, Churchill’s capacity to change are when there is most opportunity to his views on many topics depending on study his hinterland, Chartwell, his the department that he was running. bricklaying, a growing family. Although But why should we expect it to have Jenkins reproduces a number of Church- been any different? is his implicit ill’s best paintings in the photographic question – that’s what politicians do. section, this is essentially a study of the Jenkins treats Churchill’s life chrono- politician rather than the whole man. logically. He is particularly good on the The biography comes to life again Liberal years, where he can draw on his with the war. Jenkins deals deftly with extensive knowledge of the period and Churchill’s appointment by a less-than- his own experience as Home Secretary. happy King, and his conduct of the nine Pamela Plowden’s acute observation – war cabinets in late May when the that ‘the first time you meet Winston you last possibilities of a negotiated settle-
Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 33 Churchill was the greatest of all prime retired at the end of the thirties with no there are times when individuals, ministers must surely take into account war? Or the view of an Indian biogra- through the sheer force of their own his peacetime premiership, but Jenkins is pher on so vehement an opponent of will, change history. When it mattered, sidetracked by the history of the Con- India’s independence? Or of Churchill Churchill – quite simply – was there. servative Party generally and Churchill’s as a journalist, writer and painter had he fears about the nuclear bomb in particu- not also been so prominent a politician? Sam Crooks is Reviews Editor of the lar. Nonetheless an acute discussion of That said, beside those two short Journal of Liberal Democrat History. the insensitivity with which Eisenhower years all else pales. As Jenkins argues, and Dulles handled Churchill in and is a prelude to Anthony Eden’s discomfiture with American policy over ‘Exploding the delusion of protection’ Suez two years later. continued from page 30 Throughout, there are some irrita- tions. Churchill attributed to Harrow deep rooted prejudice – an hereditary amendments will attempt to interfere his appreciation of the structure of the prejudice I may call it – in their favour. with me, for I have embraced the sub- English sentence – ‘that noble thing’ – But your power was never got, and you stance of their amendments in my mo- and his writing is always colourful, will not keep it, by obstructing the spirit tion. I am ready to give those hon. simple and direct. Not so that of Jenkins, of the age in which you live. If you are Gentlemen the widest range they whose eloquence has given way to found obstructing that progressive spirit please in their inquiries. I only ask that grandiloquence with too many over- which is calculated to knit nations more this subject may be fairly investigated. long sentences and unhelpful adjectives. closely together by commercial inter- Whether I establish my principle, or There are a number of excursions into course; if you give nothing but opposi- you establish yours, good must result by-ways of little importance, such as the tion to schemes which almost give life from the inquiry; and I do beg and en- reasons for Churchill’s first, unusually and breath to inanimate nature, and treat of the honourable, independent late, parliamentary oath of allegiance, which it has been decreed shall go on, country gentlemen in this House, that the mechanics of parliamentary arith- then you are no longer a national body. they will not refuse, on this occasion, to metic, individuals’ house purchases close There is a widely spread suspicion sanction a fair, full and impartial in- to the King’s estates and his relations that you have been tampering with the quiry. (Loud cheers.) with his literary agent. Asides about feelings of your tenantry – you may events in which Jenkins played a part do read it in the organ of your party – this Another speech by Ricbard Cobden, and not always illuminate (although inter- is the time to show the people that such speechs by many other Liberal orators, are in- estingly he makes very little reference to a suspicion is groundless. I ask you to go cluded in the History Group’s Great Lib- his father, who was a parliamentary into this committee – I will give you a eral Speeches – for details see back cover. private secretary in the wartime gov- majority of county members – you shall ernment). And comparisons with Tony have a majority of members of the 1William White, The Inner Life of the House of Blair’s government today are intrusive. Central Agricultural Protection Asso- Commons, Reprinted by The Richmond Pub- lishing Co. 1973 But the major defect of an otherwise ciation in the committee; and on these 2 John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden, significant book is the lack of an terms I ask you to inquire into the Chapman and Hall 1879 analytical framework for Churchill as a causes of the distress of our agricultural 3 Jane Ridley, The Young Disraeli 1804-1846, Sinclair-Stevenson 1995 whole. Individual episodes of his life are population. I trust that neither of those treated critically and often with insight. gentlemen who have given notice of There is also a perceptive awareness of the tension between so many of his emotions and his actions – the Anglo- News from the History Group American historian who understood the importance of Europe, the devotee Email mailing list of Empire whose decision to fight The History Group has started a new email mailing list, which we will use to send out details rather than negotiate sounded its death- of forthcoming meetings and new publications to anyone who wishes to sign up (whether knell, the anti-Communist who was an or not they are a member of the Group). This will be your fastest way of finding out about ally of Stalin, the Whig who joined the meeting dates and details. If you would like to join the list, log on to our website at To ry party not once but twice. www.liberalhistory.org.uk and click on ‘want to join our mailing list?’ in the navigation bar. Yet in his overall judgement Jerkins Help wanted! fails to separate the totality of Church- We are always looking for volunteers to help us with activities – meetings, publications , and ill’s life from those two short years so on. In particular, we would like to hear from you if you would like to help us with: between the fall of France and victory • Writing reports of our meetings for the Journal in North Africa on which his place in • Developing our website as a resource for those interested in Liberal history history rests. What, for example, would • Producing the Journal, in particular help with DTP (a small fee may be payable) have been a biographer’s verdict had he Please contact the Editor via [email protected]
34 Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 Frank Cass Publishers ⌧ photos ⌧ pioneering study ⌧ written by Director of Policy of the Liberal Democrats
Liberals, International Relations and Appeasement A Study of the Liberal Party, 1919–1939
Richard S. Grayson
During the 1920s and 1930s, Britain faced many challenges in the international arena, and alternative policies were hotly debated not only in Parliament but also in wider political circles. These two decades also constituted one of the few periods in British history when the country experienced three-party politics. However, as yet there has been no major study of the Liberal Party’s central role in party-political debates on international policy. This volume fills that gap by documenting and assessing the party’s views on foreign and imperial policy. It will be of great interest to students of British foreign policy and politics, and students of international relations in general.
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A Life of Sir John Eldon Gorst Political Communications Disraeli’s Awkward Disciple The General Election of 2001 Archie Hunter John Bartle, Simon Atkinson and Roger Mortimer (Eds) Published 2001 320pp Published September 2002 280pp 0 7146 5180 X cloth £35.00 £31.50 0 7146 5290 3 cloth £35.50 £31.50
This is the first book to tell the story of one of the most This book is the sixth in a series examining political contentious figures in Victorian and Edwardian politics: communications in British general elections. It that of the independent-minded and exceptionally able provides readers with a view of the election from the Conservative politician, Sir John Eldon Gorst. perspective of key campaigners such as Philip Gould (Labour), Andrew Lansley (Conservative) and Lord As a young man, Gorst was distracted by the lure of Rennard (Liberal Democrat); a senior television politics, which would be his life long passion. He executive (Richard Tait of ITN) and the opinion became a Conservative MP in 1866, and was pollsters (Nick Moon of NOP, Bob Worcester of thereafter in the House of Commons on and off for 32 Gallup). years. Gorst ended his political life, aged 75, as a Liberal candidate at the 1910 election. He would, This volume is an indispensable contribution to our however, live to see many of the social reforms he understanding of the 2001 general election campaign had advocated from within the Tory Party implemented and the future of political campaigning in Britain. by Asquith’s Liberal Government.
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Journal of Liberal Democrat History 36 Autumn 2002 35 A Liberal Democrat History Group Fringe Meeting Remembering Jo The Legacy of Jo Grimond In 1956 Jo Grimond took over the reins of the Liberal Party and, many will argue, saved it from death. He was responsible for the Liberal Party’s first post-war revival, the highlight of which was the capture of Orpington in 1962. Grimond was associated with the strategy of realignment of the left, which would bring together the nation’s radical, progressive forces into one effective political movement. It is a strategy that remains very much in play today, most obviously in the devolved parliaments of Scotland and Wales, but also at the highest level within the Liberal Democrat and Labour Parties in Westminster. Speakers: Michael McManus (author of Jo Grimond: Towards the Sound of Gunfire), Tony Greaves (a leading Young Liberal activist during the latter part of Grimond’s leadership), Adrian Slade CBE (former Liberal Party President and publicity adviser for the 1966 general election) and William Wallace (who managed Grimond’s press publications for the 1966 campaign). 8.00 p.m., Sunday 22 September 2002 Norfolk Room, Brighton Hotel Metropole
Books from the Liberal Democrat History Group Available from: The Liberal Democrat History Group stand at the Brighton Liberal Democrat conference (discount for History Group membersmembers) The Politico’s Political Bookstore stand at the Brighton Liberal Democrat conference Politico’s Political Bookstore, 8 Artillery Row, Westminster, London SW1P 1RZ Tel: 020 7828 0010