(I) Sir Cuthbert Headlam: the Second Phase Cuthbert Morley Headlam Came from a Minor Gentry Family Which Had Its Roots in North Yorkshire and South County Durham
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2 The Headlam Diaries text, and its value as a source. Together, these furnish the context in which the diary can be used and understood. (i) Sir Cuthbert Headlam: the Second Phase Cuthbert Morley Headlam came from a minor gentry family which had its roots in north Yorkshire and south County Durham. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Headlams were extensively involved in the respectable professions of the armed services, the Established Church, the law, and public school and university education. Born on 27 April 1876 into a cadet branch, Cuthbert was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Magdalen College, Oxford. He had no inherited income to fall back upon, and throughout his life had to make his own living. On leaving Oxford in 1897 he accepted the offer of a Clerkship in the House of Lords. Here he remained until 1924, with the interruption of service on the Western Front between 1915 and 1918 during which he rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel on the General Staff. The Lords' clerkship proved to be a dreary dead end, but after his marriage to Beatrice Crawley in 1904 he was dependent upon its salary. However, in the early 1920s the development of an independent income from journalistic and business activities at last made venturing into politics a possibility, albeit a risky one. Even then, Headlam had not the surplus wealth necessary to fund the large annual subscription usually required from their candidates by Conservative Associations in safe seats. Throughout his career he was to find himself rejected on these grounds in favour of less able men, an experience which contributed to his growing embitterment by the mid-1930s. After several false starts, and armed with a promise of financial support from Conservative Central Office which he could not afford to turn down, Headlam secured adoption through his local family connections for the Barnard Castle con- stituency of County Durham in June 1924. In the general election which took place a few months later, after the fall of the first Labour government, Headlam won this highly marginal seat in a straight fight with the sitting Labour M.P. The Barnard Castle division contained a substantial portion of the west Durham coalfield, generally a Labour stronghold, together with pockets of traditional Liberalism in the Pennine dales. It was thus a difficult proposition for the Conservatives, who could only win it Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.234, on 28 Sep 2021 at 06:03:22, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960116300002207 Introduction 3 when the national tide was strongly in their favour and there was no Liberal intervention. However, representing a northern mining division in the troubled period of the mid-1920s gave Headlam opportunities in debate in the House of Commons on the key issues of the day: the role of trade unions, the political levy, the problems of the coal industry, and the long and bitter strike of 1926-27. His firm but reasonable line was in tune with the sentiments expressed by the Party leader, Stanley Baldwin, and partly as a result Headlam became the first of the large and talented Conservative intake of 1924 to be promoted. In December 1926 he was appointed to junior office as Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty, serving there until he lost his seat in the general election of May 1929. Out of Parliament, he attempted to secure adoption for a safer seat, but lack of money thwarted all such efforts. In June 1931 he was the Conservative candidate in the Gateshead by-election; although he did not win this safe Labour seat, the swing to the Conservatives which he achieved was an important indicator of electoral trends even before the August 1931 crisis and the formation of the National Government. Headlam recovered Barnard Castle in the ensuing general election of October 1931 and was appointed to junior posts, first at the Ministry of Pensions (from November 1931 to September 1932) and then at the Ministry of Transport (from September 1932 to July 1934). The latter was the busier department, but Headlam was kept mainly in the background due to the incompetence of his first Minister, Percy Pybus, who needed much outside help, and then the excess of competence of his second, Oliver Stanley, who needed no help at all. Stanley had also entered the House in 1924, but he was the younger son of the powerful 17th Earl of Derby and was already marked out as a high flier. Although their relations were friendly, Headlam felt humiliated at having to serve under a man who was twenty years younger than himself. Disillusioned with the Party leadership and having been bluntly informed by the Chief Whip that further promotion was unlikely, he resigned and returned to the backbenches in July 1934. Throughout the parliament, he was President of the 'Northern Group' of supporters of the National Government. Headlam felt condemned to fight the hard battles against Labour in the industrial north, where his efforts were neither recognised nor rewarded by the Party hierarchy in London. Not even the award of a baronetcy, gazetted in the Jubilee honours of Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.234, on 28 Sep 2021 at 06:03:22, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960116300002207 4 The Headlam Diaries June 1935, was a consolation for these disappointments - indeed, Headlam viewed the honour as 'a public recognition of my political failure'.2 As the north-east remained mired in recession during 1934 and 1935 despite the signs of recovery elsewhere, and with the National Government's policies on unemployment relief and the Special Areas in confusion, Headlam was resigned to the loss of Barnard Castle in the coming election. The intervention of a Liberal candidate - the factor which had also been critical in 1929 - was merely the final nail in his coffin. He fought hard and was only 1,320 votes behind the Labour candidate, but defeat by whatever margin still put him out of the House, despite the National Government's victory. With the loss of his seat in November 1935, Headlam believed that his political career was over.3 In addition to the habitual pessimism of his temperament, there were several reasons for this view. With a reputation for independence of mind, frankness, and even cantankerousness, he had little expectation that the Party leaders would exert themselves to assist his return to the House of Commons. Although physically fit, his age would also tell against him. Marginal seats preferred younger candidates who would be more able to withstand the pace of a gruelling campaign. Com- petition was fierce for the safer seats, whose long-serving M.P.s meant that vacancies were much less frequent. By the likely date of the next election in late 1939 or 1940, Headlam would be approaching the age of 65; even if he were to win a seat, he would be unlikely to serve beyond one parliament. Because he would be at best an interim solution, he was only likely to appeal to the nearly hopeless prospects - and they did not appeal to him, after a decade already spent trying precariously to hold on to the Barnard Castle constituency. Headlam was left only with the consolation that he had established himself as the leading Conservative politician in the north-east. Although he did not realise it, this was to be the foundation for the second half of his career, leading to his return to Parliament for a further decade as an M.P. in the 1940s. However, in the wake of rejection and with his sixtieth birthday only five months away, Headlam's intention was to devote the remainder of his active life to the world of industry and commerce. 2 Headlam diary, 17 May, 31 Dec. 1935; the orginal diaries form the main part of the Headlam MSS deposited at Durham County Record Office. 3 Headlam diary, 20 Nov., 31 Dec. 1935. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.234, on 28 Sep 2021 at 06:03:22, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960116300002207 Introduction 5 This aim was partly realised, and partly thwarted. Opportunities in London were hard to come by, whilst the sluggish nature of the economic recovery in the north-east limited the openings in the region where Headlam's name carried more weight. In fact, his political prominence was a mixed blessing: he felt that local busi- nessmen did not wish to be linked with him, for fear that this would provoke the hostility of organised labour.4 They may also have found him too abrasive, but, whatever the cause, his efforts in May-July 1936 to secure the chairmanship of the mineowners' new coal marketing body were unsuccessful. This would have brought a secure annual salary of £4,000, and the disappointment was crushing: 'I have lost all self confidence, and realize that I am a failure.'5 For the remainder of his life, the problem of scraping together an adequate income was to be his constant concern. Headlam's political career had been made possible in the 1920s by the salary he received as editor of the Army Quarterly; although this was becoming an increasingly tedious chore, he could not afford to give it up.