Reginald McKenna British Politics and Society PETER CATTERALL, Series Editor The Making of Channel 4 Mass Conservatism Edited by Peter Catterall The Conservatives and the Public since the 1880s Managing Domestic Dissent in First Edited by Stuart Ball and Ian Holliday World War Britain Brock Millman Defining British Citizenship Empire, Commonwealth and Modern Reforming the Constitution Britain Debates in Twentieth Century Britain Rieko Karatani Edited by Peter Catterall, Wolfram Kaiser and Ulrike Walton-Jordan Television Policies of the Labour Party 1951-2001 Pessimism and British War Policy, Des Freedman 1916-1918 Brock Millman Creating the National Health Service Aneurin Bevan and the Medical Lords Amateurs and Professionals in Marvin Rintala Post-War British Sport Edited by Adrian Smith and Dilwyn A Social History of Milton Keynes Porter Middle England/Edge City Mark Clapson A Life of Sir John Eldon Gorst Disraeli's Awkward Disciple Scottish Nationalism and the Idea of Archie Hunter Europe Concepts of Europe and the Nation Conservative Party Attitudes to Atsuko Ichijo Jews 1900-1950 Harry Defries The Royal Navy in the Falklands Conflict and the Gulf War Poor Health Culture and Strategy Social Inequality before and after the Alastair Finlan Black Report Edited by Virginia Berridge and Stuart The Labour Party in Opposition Blume 1970-1974 Patrick Bell The Civil Service Commission Reginald McKenna 1855-1991 Financier among Statesmen, 1863- A Bureau Biography 1916 Richard A. Chapman Martin Farr Popular Newspapers, the Labour Party and British Politics James Thomas In the Midst of Events The Foreign Office Diaries and Papers of Kenneth Younger, February 1950- October 1951 Edited by Geoffrey Warner Strangers, Aliens and Asians Huguenots, Jews and Bangladeshis in Spitalfields 1666-2000 Anne J. Kershen Conscription in Britain 1939-1964 The Militarization of a Generation Roger Broad German Migrants in Post-War Britain An Enemy Embrace Inge Weber-Newth and Johannes- Dieter Steinert The Labour Governments 1964- 1970 Edited by Peter Dorey Government, the Railways and the Modernization of Britain Beeching's Last Trains Charles Loft Britain, America and the War Debt Controversy The Economic Diplomacy of an Unspecial Relationship 1917-1941 Robert Self Reginald McKenna Financier among Statesmen, 1863-1916 Martin Farr 0 Routledge Taylor & Francis G ro u p 3 LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2008 by Routledge Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA First issued in paperback 2015 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2008 Martin Farr The Open Access version of this book, available at www.tandfebooks.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record has been requested. Typeset in 10 point Sabon Roman by IBT Global. ISBN13: 978-0-415-54309-5 (pbk) ISBN13: 978-0-7146-5047-0 (hbk) To Mum and Dad Contents Abbreviations xi Preface xiii Acknowledgments xv Selective Family Trees xix Chronology xxi Introduction 1 1 Beginnings, July 1863 to July 1895 17 2 Opposition Backbencher, August 1895 to December 1905 49 3 Financial Secretary to the Treasury; President of the Board of Education, December 1905 to April 1908 82 4 First Lord of the Admiralty, April 1908 to October 1911 142 5 Home Secretary, October 1911 to May 1915 223 6 Chancellor of the Exchequer, May 1915 to December 1916 285 Bibliography 341 Index 359 Abbreviations CMcK: Cecilia McKenna DMcK: David McKenna HHA: H. H. Asquith MA: Margot Asquith MMcK: Michael McKenna PJ: Pamela Jekyll PMcK: Pamela McKenna RMcK: Reginald McKenna RMcK: Stephen McKenna, Reginald McKenna 1863-1943: A Memoir, 1948 SMcK: Stephen McKenna Preface I am sure no one would want to read [a biography] more than a quarter of a century after Reggie's departure from the political stage.' In the overgrown field of modern British political biography, Reginald McKenna has managed to avoid attention. The only author to have written a book about him, his nephew Stephen McKenna, recalled: IMly uncle's attitude to a biography of himself was one of completely passive, dumb indifference. He did not help, he would not hinder.'2 The sudden reversal in McKenna's reputation marked by these volumes—Stephen's book being notionally a memoir but essentially an homage to both a man and an era—is due in part merely to the passing of time. A historian was always likely to alight on one of the most significant and intriguing public figures of the first half of the twentieth century. It did not help, however, that, unusually for a senior politician, the public figure never made any public comment about his parliamentary life during his lengthy post-parliamentary career. Nor did it help that the putative subject appeared to have left few private papers, without which considered research would be problematic. This Life was made possible by the newly discovered archive and has been constituted largely from manuscript sources. It is concerned with a person and based in the main on the evidence of individuals. After the introduction, only primary material, the thoughts of the subject himself, or of those who knew him, appear in the text. The use made of McKenna's own thoughts and writing is unprecedented, as, in most instances, they were unavailable. The cooperation of McKenna's surviving son not only made the project feasible, it also provided the author with most of the information about the Where no location or archive has been cited, the document referred to was part of the uncatalogued McKenna papers, which were in the author's possession from 1999 to 2005, when they were deposited with the rest of the McKenna papers at the Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College Cambridge. Unless otherwise stated, all books were published in London. 1. SMcK to Vincent Baddeley, 23 June 1944. 2. RMcK, xi. xiv Preface private and personal traits and activities of his subject. It was a privilege for a biographer to be able to commune—albeit at one remove—with his sub- ject of a century before. It was also a proximity that risked the desired schol- arly distance; indeed, such prolonged and inescapable captivity has perhaps produced something of a Stockholm syndrome on the part of the author. This Life is intended to provide a full biography of the man. This volume is concerned with the first—the parliamentary—half of his public career. It is intended to be a volume of record, rather than a political study. It aims, as will the subsequent volume, to chronicle McKenna's life as he lived it, rather than necessarily to highlight his subsequent historical significance, or neces- sarily to engage significantly with ongoing historical debates. This is more of a perhaps somewhat old-fashioned two-volume Life and Letters of the like of which many of McKenna's peers were subject, an undertaking that can provide for further, more imaginative interpretation. Curiously, with Stephen's book, such an evaluation came first. Acknowledgments I am grateful to the staff of the libraries and archives where I have con- ducted research: the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick; Bodleian Library, Oxford; British Library, London; House of Lords Records Office, London; Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge; National Archives, Kew; Cambridge University Library; National Library of Scotland, Edin- burgh; Oriental and India Office Collection, London; University of Adelaide Library; Hertfordshire County Record Office, Hertford; Royal Archives, Windsor; British Library of Political and Economic Science, London; Dur- ham University Library; Liddell Hart Centre, Kings College London Uni- versity, London; Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth; National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth; Birmingham University Library; Glasgow University Library; Trinity College, Cambridge; Bank of England Archive, London; Newcastle University Library; University of Manchester Library; Labour History Centre, Manchester; HSBC Head Office, London; and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. I owe particular thanks to Pamela Clark at the Royal Archives, and to Andrew Riley at Churchill. I am grateful to the family and estate of Reginald McKenna for permission to quote from family papers and to reproduce family photographs. Material from the Royal Archives is reproduced with the gracious permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. I am grateful to the trustees of the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, for permission to quote from material in their possession, and to the Rt Hon Earl Haig as holder of his father's copy- right; to the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, for permission to quote from the Herbert Lewis papers; to the Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth, to quote from the George King Hall papers; to Lord Selborne for permission to quote from the Selborne papers; to Special Collections at Birmingham University, for permission to quote from the Oliver Lodge papers; to the British Library for permission to quote from the Balfour, Burns, Campbell- Bannerman, Cave, Cecil, Dilke, Evans Thomas, Gladstone, Grant, Hamil- ton, and jellicoe papers; to Mr Christopher Osborn for permission to quote from the Margot Asquith papers; to Mrs Nancy McLaren for permission to quote from the McLaren papers; to Alexander Murray for permission to quote from the Gilbert Murray papers; to the Hon Mrs E. A. Gascoigne for xvi Acknowledgments permission to quote from the Harcourt papers; to