In April 2011, the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles named the Smallholdings and Allotments Act 1908 among those ancient THREE ACRES AND A COW pieces of legislation, tying the hands of local authorities, which were up for review. This was the Liberal legislation which, among other things, still requires local authorities to provide land for allotments when there is demand for it. There was a huge outcry in the press and the rapidly expanding allotments movement promised to fight this tooth and nail. The Independent immediately launched a ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign against it, aware of how powerful the allotments movement has become.1 David Cameron moved rapidly to reassure people that the 1908 law would stay. David Boyle looks at the story of the 1908 Smallholdings and Allotments Act, and the campaign that resulted in it, led by Liberal MP Jesse Collings.

38 Journal of Liberal History 80 Autumn 2013 THREE ACRES AND A COW

his modern resonance followed him). It regarded the great Liberal MP for Ipswich and then makes the 1908 legisla- original sin of Whig politics as the Bordesley. Ttion important. But the Enclosures, which drove poor peo- Collings had become a commer- history of the Smallholdings and ple off the land, undermining their cial traveller, took over the com- Allotments Act was not quite what independence and creating a new pany he worked for, and became it appears on the face of it, and the class of paupers condemned to eke a close friend of Joseph Chamber- legislation was not quite the uncon- out a dependent existence in the lain at the beginning of his politi- troversial breakthrough that it now new cities. cal career in Birmingham. He seems. On the face of it, the Small- ‘The agricultural labourer of understood from his own experi- holdings Act was the culmination modern times is in a position quite ence the importance of a patch of of a campaign for more smallhold- different from that of the agricul- land for those in poverty. His father ings and allotments stretching tural labourer of former years,’ had rented four acres next to their back four decades by the Liberal said Collings in his 1908 book Land house. ‘On these four acres we grew campaigner Jesse Collings. In prac- Reform, written as part of the debate wheat, barley, potatoes, and other tice, when it came to the point, on the law which Pickles wanted to vegetables,’ he wrote in his auto- Collings was its bitterest critic remove.2 ‘In former times, the agri- biography. ‘We kept a number of and opponent. The debate on the cultural labourer was a man who pigs and a large number of fowls. Smallholdings Act at the time was a generally possessed land and almost For myself I had a fancy for rabbits, showpiece clash between the Liber- invariably had rights in common in guinea-pigs, hedgehogs, and ferrets. als and their erstwhile colleagues in connection with the cartilage of his We grew each year sufficient wheat the Liberal Unionists. It was a divi- cottage. This enabled him to keep to supply the family with bread.’3 sion that stymied the Liberal land stock of various kinds and of more It was his fervent support for campaign which, back in the 1880s, or less value, the proceeds of which, the north in the American Civil had looked set to sweep all before added to his earnings as a labourer, War which brought him into for- it. The same divisions may even placed him in a fairly prosperous mal politics, then his admiration remain to this day. condition. The modern agricultural for the American school system. To understand the debate, and labourer is a mere wage receiver.’ By the 1870s, he was a town coun- why it was so bitter, we have to go Liberal politics in the mid-nine- cillor representing Edgbaston, back to the standard critique put teenth century had tended to be an working in Birmingham with forward by the back-to-the-land urban phenomenon, a product in its Chamberlain on the project to cre- movement, a tradition which often own way of the Industrial Revolu- ate a city that was ‘parked, paved, dovetailed with aspects of Liberal- tion. But the agricultural depres- assized, marketed, gas & watered ism but which was primarily artic- sion of the 1870s brought agrarian and improved’ (Collings’ phrase). ulated by people very much on the campaigners into prominent posi- He was also among the organis- fringes of the Liberal Party (Wil- tions in the Liberal Party. Joseph ers, with Arch, of the Agricultural liam Morris, before his conversion Arch, the farm workers’ leader, Labourers Union, a Midlands phe- to socialism), or proto-Liberals was elected as MP for North West nomenon originally, formed on who pre-dated it (William Cob- Norfolk in the crucial year of 1886. Good Friday 1872 under a chestnut bett, Thomas Jefferson), or who But the most prominent of them all tree in Wellesbourne. His work on were actually opposed to Liberal- was a bricklayer’s son from Devon Jesse Collings the union led to the invitation to ism (John Ruskin and those who called Jesse Collings, the future (1831–1920) stand for parliament as a Liberal.

Journal of Liberal History 80 Autumn 2013 39 three acres and a cow

Collings came to believe that The key sharpest in rural Ireland – was right demonstrations after the House of the best solution to urban poverty, at the forefront of political debate. Lords threw out the extended fran- and the best way of providing a reform The debate was spearheaded by chise in 1884, with farm labourers dignified independence to agricul- Chamberlain’s increasingly radical marching into London from Kent tural workers, was to repopulate was for the energies, Chamberlain campaign- and Sussex in a pattern faintly rem- rural areas and rebuild the peasant ing in the cities, and Collings in iniscent of the Peasants Revolt. The class. That meant providing land state to the rural areas. They were a formi- Daily News spoke patronisingly of for anyone who wanted it to meet dable couple, utterly loyal to each ‘men who carried fresh-cut walk- their own needs. He and the union help labour- other, though Collings made fun ing sticks and who do not show the drew up the first of a whole series of Chamberlain incessantly. They remotest affectation of the ways of of bills that would give poor peo- ers become were also a formidable sight on the town life’. ple rights over land, to ‘restore the their own stump, Collings with his huge side It was during the forthcom- connection, now almost destroyed, whiskers, Chamberlain with his ing general election in 1885, in a between the cultivator and the soil’. landlords. trade mark monocle and orchid in speech at Cirencester, that Collings If he could get it enacted, he said, it the breast of his long coat. first used his famous slogan ‘Three ‘would largely diminish pauperism; It was an Chamberlain had set land acres and a cow’. It was not a new and would increase the numbers, reform at the heart of his ‘unau- phrase and it was much ridiculed and raise the social condition of the idea bitterly thorised programme’, which by his Conservative opponents, rural population’.4 – although it was considered dan- but it caught the zeitgeist, setting The key reform was for the state opposed gerously radical at the time – was out clearly what he considered the to help labourers become their actually designed partly to under- minimum for a family to live on. own landlords. It was an idea bit- by the big mine socialism. It was formulated Chamberlain adopted the slogan terly opposed by the big landown- to provide ordinary people with a for his own programme, which set ers, perhaps unsurprisingly, who landown- measure of economic independence out how the state would buy land regarded it as the first stage of a rad- by distributing small plots of land, and let it to anyone who wanted ical expropriation of their inher- ers, perhaps as well as setting out a programme it, at the rate of one acre of arable itance. It was also opposed by the of education, democratic reform and four acres of pasture. It was farmers, afraid that it would make unsurpris- and decentralisation: it was a new the moment that the Liberal Party their labourers too independent, kind of populist Liberalism. adopted some of the flavour of Rus- and much of Collings’ campaigning ingly, who ‘If you go back to the early his- kinian radicalism. ‘The standard of was designed to persuade them it tory of our social system,’ he said welfare of the large family we call would also benefit them. regarded in his speech on the Reform Bill of the nation should be not so much That was the challenge. But Lib- it as the 1885, ‘you will find that … every the amount of its aggregate money eral politics in the mid-nineteenth man was born into the world with wealth,’ wrote Collings in a close century was optimistic when the first stage natural rights, with a right to share echo of Ruskin, ‘but the moral, Back to the Land tradition was in the great inheritance of the com- material and social condition of the deeply pessimistic. It was Non- of a radical munity, with a right to a part of the great mass of its members.’9 conformist when the tradition was land of his birth.’6 Collings’ new law had produced often Anglo-Catholic. It believed expropria- The great land magnates were 394,517 allotments or smallhold- in the inevitability of progress appalled, but when the grand old ings of under four acres and 272,000 when the tradition was deeply scep- tion of their man of Liberalism, John Bright, ‘garden allotments’. He had been tical of it. So Collings’ deft weav- threw his weight behind the land elected chairman of the new Allot- ing together of Liberalism and rural inheritance. campaign, it was clear that policy ment Extension Association to keep radicalism was a new phenomenon, was moving on apace. ‘The time is up the pressure. Historians some- at least new since the days of Cob- near in my opinion,’ he said, ‘when times argue that the Unauthorised bett and his Rural Rides. the great land monopoly of this Programme had little impact.10 But There was also a theological country will be assailed and when it the allotments element, which it dimension because the few allot- will be broken into and broken up.’7 gave birth to, was a political theme ments that existed in rural areas Chamberlain lit the touchpaper which echoed through the next six were usually under the control of of the political fireworks with an decades. Providing access to land the local churches or the chari- attack on the Conservative leader was the proposed solution – not ties they controlled. Trustees often Lord Salisbury, describing him as taxing land, the great campaign interpreted their responsibilities ‘the spokesman of a class – a class to of the 1890s, because that accepted so tightly that nobody who really which he himself belongs, who toil ownership patterns as they stood. needed allotments could possibly not neither do they spin’.8 For Collings, land was to be reor- find their way onto them.5 But the Collings achieved his first suc- ganised in such a way that anyone understanding of the importance of cess with the Allotments Extension who wanted to access to it should common land and preservation was Act of 1883. It was a small meas- be able to have it, whoever they beginning to grow in the 1870s as ure to prevent local parishes from were, wherever they lived. the Commons Preservation Society frustrating access to allotments. It was at this point that his got under way and William Morris But at the heart of the land bat- amendment to the Queen’s Speech launched his Society for the Pro- tle was the question of giving two in January 1886, regretting that tection of Ancient Buildings. New million agricultural labourers the Lord Salisbury’s Conservative versions of common land were in vote, under the assumption that government had no plans to help the air and, as the 1880s dawned, they would force through radical agricultural labourers find allot- the land question – especially at its land legislation. There were huge ments and smallholdings, was

40 Journal of Liberal History 80 Autumn 2013 three acres and a cow unexpectedly passed by the House in Lincolnshire, which was unex- colleagues in the Liberals were less of Commons. It brought down the pectedly won by a Liberal on the interested in providing new forms government. This became known allotments issue. By then, he had of land ownership. They were as the ‘Three Acres and a Cow’ decided to save what he could, and increasingly interested in using the amendment. At long last, the Lib- split his bill into two. What was tax system to take away the power eral leader William Ewart Glad- passed was the Allotments and of the landowners – not adding to stone rose in his seat to support Cottage Gardens Compensation their number. Collings during the debate, prom- for Crops Act 1887, which obliged Collings’ influence on Cham- ising to ‘restore the old local com- local authorities to provide allot- berlain’s son Austen was bringing munities of this country something ments if there was a demand for the Conservatives round to the idea of that character of a community, them. Allotments later became the of a new class of owners on the land in which the common interests of key issue in the first county council – as long as the smallholdings were the individual labourer may be so elections in 1889. Even the evolu- not so big that labourers became managed as to associate him with tion pioneer Alfred Russel Wallace independent of farmers.12 The Con- the soil in a manner much more joined in the campaign by applying servative Lord Onslow launched effectively than that by which he for an allotment to the new Dorset his Association for the Voluntary is associated with it at present’.11 County Council and then publicis- Extension of the Allotments Sys- A few days later, Gladstone took ing the delays and barriers thrown tem as a way to head off their fears office at the head of a new Liberal in his way by reluctant officials. that the Liberals would nationalise government. Collings had never Even so, three years later, another the land. been so hopeful, but it was all to 150,000 people had allotments. At the same time, Collings’ turn to ashes within months. In March 1891, Collings finally At the same smallholdings campaign was The first sign of trouble came passed the other half, his Small- attracting the determined oppo- when he introduced his Allotments holdings Bill. It had taken him time, Coll- sition of the new Labour Party. and Small Holdings Bill, designed eleven years of constant campaign- Ramsay Macdonald himself to give parishes the power to pro- ing, reintroducing the bill with ings’ small- opposed him in a ten-minute-rule- vide allotments where there was a every session, rather as Sir John bill debate in 1907. The idea of land demand and nowhere was available Lubbock had done with his Ancient holdings ownership, even by the poorest, at a reasonable rent. To his conster- Monuments Act. But there was was anathema to socialists. Coll- nation, the new government failed an irony here: the Smallholdings campaign ings’ other political problem was to adopt it. Instead, Gladstone Bill was passed with Conservative that his Liberal Unionists now pushed forward his deeply contro- votes. ‘I have in the last five years was attract- barely existed. Chamberlain had versial Irish Home Rule Bill, deter- seen more progress made with the become a ferocious imperialist, mined once and for all to end the practical application of my political ing the and Colonial Secretary in the gov- centuries of dispute with Ireland. It programme than in all my previous determined ernment, and the Liberal Unionist was a brave move, but Collings and life,’ wrote Chamberlain shortly party organisation was to be wound his colleagues were enraged that afterwards. ‘I owe this result opposition up completely in 1912. so much urgent radical legislation entirely to my former opponents, Worse, as far as Collings was was being postponed for a Home and all the opposition has come of the new concerned, the Liberal landslide at Rule measure they hardly found from my former friends.’ the beginning of 1906 had swept convincing. The new political divisions Labour Party. the Unionists from power. Cham- The divisions in the party saw began to make themselves felt. berlain took the opportunity to Chamberlain and Collings both Collings passionately believed Ramsay Mac- swoop on a weakened Conserva- in the new grouping of Liberal that the smallholdings should be tive Party and to effectively seize Unionists. It was a traumatic period owned outright, as similar legis- donald him- the leadership for his radical impe- of betrayal and shattered friend- lation allowed for in Ireland. He rialism. But just as his moment of ships. Arch stayed with the Glad- wanted his new peasant class to be self opposed triumph, he was struck down by a stonian Liberals while Collings and proprietors, not dependent on land- paralysing stroke. the land reformers followed Cham- lords, even if those landlords were him in a ten- Lloyd George maintained the berlain. Collings was flung out the county councils. He drafted old Collings line as late as 1910. ‘I of his own Allotments Extension his Purchase of Land Bill in 1895, minute-rule- hope Liberalism will see its way to Association, which was then in the designed to let ordinary farm ten- go even further than ensuring secu- hands of the Gladstonians. Instead, ants buy their farms, by advancing bill debate rity of tenure for those who culti- he set up the new Rural Labourers them the money to do so, and doing vate the soil,’ he told the audience at League, with Chamberlain in the the same for people who wanted to in 1907. The the Queen’s Hall in London.13 ‘Our chair, which became a formidable be smallholders. He reintroduced it idea of land chairman has already indicated that campaign organisation in its own every year until 1914. It never made in his judgement there should be right, with 25 paid local agents and it into law. ownership, some great measure which would 3,000 volunteers nationwide. The problem was that the poli- transfer the ownership of the soil Despite this stressful and upset- tics of the debate was changing. even by the from the great landowners to the ting process, Collings went on Gladstone’s final administration cultivating peasants.’ campaigning, battling for his gave powers to parish councils to poorest, was But the politics was different bill through increasingly elon- acquire allotments, but they were now. The main thrust of the new gated sessions until he could do no to be rented, not sold or given anathema to Liberal government was to build on more. The issues were put to the away. The land tax debate was now the idea of security of tenure and test in a by-election in Spalding emerging and Collings’ former socialists. they saw it differently to Collings.

Journal of Liberal History 80 Autumn 2013 41 three acres and a cow

‘The magic of property, such as it He had his common (cheers) Society, a new pressure group set is, is derived not from ownership where he could graze a cow that up in 1907 by the American soap but from security,’ said Asquith, would give him milk and but- millionaire Joseph Fels, follow- the Home Secretary.14 So when the ter for himself and his children. ing a series of controversial land Liberals’ twin Smallholdings and There was a little patch where invasions on the outskirts of cit- Allotments Bills emerged, in 1907 he could raise corn to feed them. ies by people who wanted to grow and 1908, security not ownership There he had his poultry, his food. Fels had been at the forefront was the objective. In fact, would- geese, his pigs; a patch of land of the vacant lot societies that had be smallholders had to find a fifth where he could raise green pro- emerged at the end of the nine- of the purchase money themselves. duce for the table. He was a gen- teenth century in so many Ameri- This was the proposal of a com- tlemen; he was independent. He can cities, as a way of linking ‘idle mission chaired by the banker Sir had a stake in his country. His land with idle labour’. Edward Holden, who said that a title was as ancient and appar- By November 1916, Lloyd new land bank should only advance ently as indefensible as that of George was about to take over four-fifths of the price at 4 per cent the lord of the manor. Where the coalition government, which interest. New smallholding ten- had it gone to? Stolen.17 would leave both Asquith and ants would have to pay the interest Crawford out of office. But by then, on the loan to buy the land for their It was radical. It may have resulted the key policy shift had been made. farms, but the ownership would in major extensions to land avail- Crawford called in the Vacant Land still stay with the county councils. able for allotments if the First Cultivation Society to ask their ‘It is, in short a communalization World War had not intervened, advice about what he was plan- of the land, not at the expense of but it wasn’t what Collings had Rather unex- ning. Included in the meeting was the hated landlord, but at that of campaigned for. In March 1909, the society’s enthusiastic organis- the ‘sweated’ tenant,’ said a furious a disappointed Collings slipped pectedly, ing director for London, Gerald Collings.15 on the icy footboard of a train at Butcher. The smallholdings aspect of Charing Cross Station, fell on the the war pro- Butcher explained that after ‘an the new law was a failure: less than platform and fractured his hip. He interview lasting an hour or more, 5,000 new smallholders took the never entirely recovered, but he vided the [we] left with the full knowledge plunge, mainly in market gardens was paradoxically to see a peculiar that probably the greatest drama near the big cities, but it was dif- and extremely sudden revival of his opportunity which had taken place in land ferent for allotments. The 1907 Act political fortunes. reform for many generations was was consolidated into the 1908 Act, Rather unexpectedly, the war to shift the about to be enacted …’ but Jesse Collings, the great advo- provided the opportunity to shift cate of allotments – the key figure the debate again because producing debate again For once, at any rate, the privi- in their history in the UK – voted food suddenly became urgent and because pro- lege of the few was to become against it. His remaining allies tried vitally important. Britain could no the right of the many. By virtue to extend the rights of tenant farm- longer feed her own population, ducing food of the powers conferred by the ers to buy their farms with state and the U-boat blockade made food Defence of the Realm Regula- help when they were for sale, but imports difficult and dangerous. suddenly tions, the government was about their amendment was lost by fifty- Food also took up space in the holds to lay its hand upon the most six votes. of merchant ships that could have became sacred of monopolies, the most By the end of the decade, even been used for arms. The time had jealously guarded of all vested Lloyd George was on the other side. come to revitalise Britain’s agricul- urgent interests; it intended, briefly, ‘Great Britain, in my judgement, tural base. to commandeer certain land in is utterly unsuited to the establish- The Dig for Victory campaign and vitally order that allotments might be ment of a great peasant proprietor- of the Second World War remains a provided on a large and unprec- ship,’ he said.16 It was a bitter blow part of British folk memory, but its important. edented scale.18 to Collings, who was now in ill equivalent in the First World War health and desperate to give up his has been forgotten. Yet right at the Britain could Two weeks later, Crawford made parliamentary seat. The great cause heart of it all was Collings’ Rural his plans public. The result was the he had given his political career Labourers’ League, encouraging no longer Cultivation of Lands Order 1916. to seemed to have finally been village industries, linking them It gave county councils the right to defeated. What he had actually up with local smallholdings, and feed her take over wasteland or abandoned achieved, embedding allotments eventually concentrating on pro- land, without the consent or even into the new local government moting the idea of potato and live- own popula- knowledge of its owners, and use it machine, was vital for the future, stock clubs. Soon 400 of these clubs tion, and the to grow food. Crawford had been but it was so little compared to the had begun, with an average mem- nervous that the order would out- scale of his ambition: to get people bership of about thirty each – and U-boat block- rage people, but in fact the local back on the land. involving about 24,000 pigs. authorities were overwhelmed with Lloyd George launched his own But the League was no longer ade made demand from people applying to land campaign in 1913, borrowing the central player. The major turn specific bits of land into allot- Collings’ radical language about revival of allotments in 1916 was food imports ments, or to take over part of the the rural English, but to argue brought about by the new Con- new allotments themselves. instead for land tax, conjuring up servative agriculture minister, the difficult and The allotments of the First a vision of the sturdy, traditional Earl of Crawford, and his alliance World War were a social phenom- peasant: with the Vacant Land Cultivation dangerous. enon and their effects were to echo

42 Journal of Liberal History 80 Autumn 2013 three acres and a cow through society long after the plots Collings died origins or objectives. When the 9 Collings and Green, Life of Collings, p. had been handed back to the hous- generation after Collings began to 181. ing developers. Many of those on 20 Novem- pull together the lost and frayed 10 See Ian Packer, Lloyd George, Lib- using them for growing vegetables strands of his campaign, they did so eralism and the Land: The land issue had no idea how to distribute their ber 1920, outside the Liberal Party. and party politics in England 1906–1914 produce, and refused to sell it – but (Royal Historical Society/Boydell gave it away around the neighbour- believing that David Boyle is the author of On the Press, 2001), pp. 12–13. hood as a sign of largesse. Those Eighth Day, God Created Allot- 11 Collings and Green, Life of Collings, who did sell it found, on average his campaign ments: A brief history of the allot- pp. 185–6. that allotment growing could pro- had achieved ments campaign (Endeavour Press). 12 See Paul Readman, Land and Nation duce food to the value of £80 an in England: Patriotism, national identity acre – in the days when a hefty bag its objectives. 1 The Independent, 1 May 2011. and the politics of land 1880–1914 (Royal of potatoes cost 5d (about 2p).19 The 2 J. Collings, Land Reform (Longmans, Historical Society/Boydell Press, argument for allotments as a tool of He could look Green, 1908), p. xvii. 2008), p. 20. poverty reduction seemed to have 3 J. Collings and Sir John L. Green, 13 J. Collings, The Colonization of Rural been won. back on an Life of the Rt Hon. Jesse Collings (Long- Britain (Rural World, 1914), vol. 2, The desperate need for home mans, Green, 1920). pp. 332–3. grown food in the First World War extraordinary 4 Ibid., p. 124. 14 Collings and Green, Life of Collings, p. had also converted Lloyd George 5 Simon Grimble, Landscape Writing 273. to the old Liberal Unionist posi- focused life of and the Condition of England 1878-1917: 15 Collings, Colonization, p. 339. tion, leading to the Land Settle- Ruskin to modernism (Edwin Mellen 16 This was in July 1913, see Collings, ment (Facilities) Bill of December commitment Press, 2004), p. 86. Colonization, p. 333. 1918, designed to resettle returning 6 J. Garvin, The Life of Joseph Chamber- 17 The Times, 12 Oct. 1913. soldiers on the land. Collings was to the cause, lain (London, 1932), p. 549. 18 Gerald W. Butcher, Allotments for All: ill, but his friends rallied round and 7 Manchester Guardian, 25 Mar. 1880. The story of a great movement (George organised a successful amendment stretching 8 speech, 30 Mar. Allen & Unwin, 1918), p. 18. allowing smallholders to buy their 1883. 19 Ibid., p. 31. land after six years, and to pay back from the days the money over sixty years. Two years later, another 208,000 of town plan- acres had been acquired for for- mer soldiers. Collings died on 20 ning, Ideal November 1920, believing that his Home maga- campaign had achieved its objec- tives. He could look back on an zine and hens extraordinary focused life of com- mitment to the cause, stretching in suburban Reviews from the days of town planning, Ideal Home magazine and hens in back gardens, suburban back gardens, right back to Cobbett, the Great Reform Act, right back to Scapegoat for Liberalism? and the Captain Swing riots. He was old enough to have signed the Cobbett, the Antony Lentin, Banker, Traitor, Scapegoat, Spy? The petition calling for the repeal of the Troublesome Case of Sir Edgar Speyer (Haus, 2013) Corn Laws in the 1840s and to have Great Reform regretted doing so. It was a long Reviewed by David Dutton lifetime, nine decades, of unprec- Act, and the edented change. he First World War gave time, however, as War Minis- Actually, Collings was wrong. Captain Swing rise to countless acts of ter under Campbell-Bannerman The kind of transformation in land riots. Tpatriotic bravery and self- and Asquith, Haldane had done ownership and small-scale agricul- sacrifice. But it also prompted a more than anyone else to prepare ture he imagined, and could see in large number of instances of ugly the British Expeditionary Force other European countries on his xenophobia. As is well known, for military combat in 1914. This, summer jaunts with Chamberlain, the First Sea Lord, Prince Louis however, did not spare the by-then did not come to pass after all. The of Battenberg, second cousin of Lord Chancellor from a vitriolic great opportunity that opened up King George V, father of Louis campaign in the right-wing press. for land reform on that scale was Mountbatten and a nationalised The recipient of more than 2,500 a victim Home Rule divisions in British subject who had served in abusive letters in a single day, Hal- the Liberal Party and the frustra- the Royal Navy from the age of dane was summarily dropped from tion of Lloyd George’s Land Cam- fourteen, was forced from office in the government at the formation paign by the First World War. The October 1914, solely on account of of the first wartime coalition in 1885 slogan ‘Three acres and a cow’ his German birth. The offence of May 1915 – the price Prime Min- continued to be associated with the Lord Haldane was equally slight. ister Asquith was prepared to pay Liberal Party well into the second An admirer of German culture, to ensure Conservative participa- half of the twentieth century, but he had once described Germany tion in the government and his own with little understanding about its as his ‘spiritual home’. At the same position at its head. Even innocent

Journal of Liberal History 80 Autumn 2013 43