Walter Runciman and the Decline of the Liberal Party

WaltER RUNCIMAN AND thE DECliNE of thE LIBERal PARTY Historians remain divided about the contribution that biography can make to their craft. Those who believe that the study of individuals is important because the decisions of those individuals affect the course of events and that the replacement of one key player in the historical mosaic can significantly change the way in which history evolves are matched by others who argue that biography inevitably exaggerates the role and significance of the individual and distorts the reality of the historical narrative. By David Dutton.1 26 Journal of Liberal History 84 Autumn 2014 WaltER RUNCIMAN AND thE DECliNE of thE LIBERal PARTY etween someone like parliament alongside his own father seafaring family. Two of his great- Thomas Carlyle, who and even of having preceded him grandfathers fought as midshipmen Bwrote that ‘history is the there. A governmental colleague at Trafalgar, while his father, also essence of innumerable biogra- offered a very fair assessment of him called Walter, rose from humble phies’, and the committed Marxist in 1912. ‘Runciman,’ he wrote, ‘is beginnings to own a major ship- who views the individual as a help- able, honest, hard-working, coura- ping company in the north-east. less cork bobbing up and down on geous, but while a good speaker, The traditional Liberal commit- the remorseless tides of economic just lacks that touch of genius which ment to free trade was part of the determinism, there can be no meet- Churchill has got, and that charm young Walter’s thinking as a pros- ing of minds.2 But somewhere which Lloyd George abounds in. He perous businessman. So too was his between these competing views will enjoy and deserve high office, support for temperance as a lifelong there may perhaps be an accept- but never I think the highest.’3 So it Wesleyian Methodist. Throughout ance that the career of an individual turned out. Runciman never held his political career, contemporaries can offer a revealing prism through one of the great offices of state; his pointed to the continuing impor- which to study important historical most senior appointment was as tance of Runciman’s background themes and problems. President of the Board of Trade, in the world of business and com- The political biography of Wal- where he played an important role merce. A Cabinet colleague dur- ter Runciman, first Viscount Run- in shifting British policy away from ing the First World War found him ciman of Doxford, offers such an free trade in the early 1930s. His- ‘lucid, concise and courageous … opportunity. Runciman’s career tory best remembers him for a job ambitious and a little cocksure. A was certainly a long one. First he performed when not holding hardworking, very capable man elected to the House of Commons government office, travelling to of business….’5 Many years later, in 1899 as Britain became involved Czechoslovakia in the summer of the journalist Colin Coote wrote in the Boer War, he finally retired 1938 in an ultimately unsuccessful approvingly of a ‘shrewdly practi- from his last Cabinet post at the out- attempt to broker a peaceful set- cal business man … whose politics break of the Second World War 40 tlement of the crisis between the were more pragmatic than dog- years later. But political longevity Czechoslovak government and the matic’.6 Even Neville Chamber- does not in itself confer significance, Sudeten Germans, before Prime lain, in announcing to the House and it has to be conceded that Run- Minister Neville Chamberlain took of Commons Runciman’s appoint- ciman was never a politician of the the problem into his own hands in ment as ‘independent mediator’ absolutely first rank. ‘Who were the direct negotiations with Adolf Hit- in the Czechoslovakian crisis of first married couple to sit together ler. Briefly, at least in the opinion of 1938, suggested he would be play- in the House of Commons?’ may be Chamberlain’s Minister of Health, ing the part ‘of a man who goes a good pub quiz question, but the Walter Elliot, Runciman became down to assist in settling a strike’.7 answer – Walter and Hilda Runci- the second most powerful man in Walter But this practical man of business man – does not necessarily endow the world. Unfortunately, Elliot Runciman, struck many as stiff and cold in those concerned with overwhelm- had to add that the most powerful 1st Viscount personality. The Tory MP, Cuth- ing historical importance, even was Adolf Hitler.4 Runciman bert Headlam, always found him if Walter can also claim the unu- Runciman’s background helped of Doxford ‘friendly and pleasant’ but never ‘a sual distinction of having sat in determine his politics. His was a (1870–1949) popular character – clever, etc., but Journal of Liberal History 84 Autumn 2014 27 WaltER RUNCIMAN AND THE DECliNE of THE liBERal paRTY lacking the human touch’. He had more plausible propositions, claim- For all that, Labour Party for eventual fusion to heard that Herbert Asquith, who ing that at the very moment of the have taken place – if it hadn’t been enjoyed inventing pseudonyms for Liberal Party’s greatest electoral Runciman’s for the intervention of the First his political colleagues, preferred success, its overwhelming vic- World War. In practical terms, this ‘the old Pirate’ [Runciman’s father] tory of 1906, the die was already career does community of purpose manifested to the ‘Alabaster Statesman’.8 Simi- cast. ‘The Liberal Party which itself in an electoral pact whereby larly, Lloyd George is said to have came back to Westminster with offer an in many constituencies Liberal remarked that Runciman ‘would an overwhelming majority was’, and Labour candidates gave way make a thermometer drop, even at he claimed, ‘already doomed. It excellent to one another in order to avoid a distance’.9 This sense of separation was like an army protected at all splitting the ‘progressive’ vote. Far from his fellow men was underlined points except for one vital posi- opportunity from being replaced by Labour, the by Runciman’s somewhat dated tion on its flank. With the election to investi- Liberals were well positioned to style of dress. Like Chamberlain, of fifty-three Labour representa- contain the Labour threat and ulti- he favoured the winged collar long tives, the death of Liberalism was gate one of mately swallow it up.12 after it had gone out of fashion. pronounced; it was no longer the How then does the career of For all that, Runciman’s career Left.’10 In other words, in an elec- the most Walter Runciman throw light on does offer an excellent opportunity toral structure in which the logi- this highly polarised debate? A con- to investigate one of the most con- cal state of affairs was a struggle contentious sensus has grown up among histo- tentious historical controversies of between a party of the right and a rians in recent years that the picture the first half of the twentieth cen- party of the left, the Liberals were historical of Liberal–Labour relations varied tury, the decline of the British Lib- about to forfeit their claim to be enormously in different parts of eral Party. Ever since 1936, when the that of the left. The beginnings of controver- the country. Dangerfield’s blan- Cambridge historian George Dan- the Labour Party with its claim to ket gloom is unjustified; but so gerfield published his celebrated, be the party of the British work- sies of the too is the view of Clarke, derived seductive, persuasive, but sadly very ing class was bound in time to lead from the rather atypical circum- wrong study, The Strange Death of to the eclipse of Liberalism. Simi- first half of stances of Lancashire, that all was Liberal England, this issue has fasci- larly, Henry Pelling has written of well in a revitalised and progres- nated students of British politics. the growth of a sort of undogmatic the twenti- sive Liberal Party. Certainly, Run- Runciman’s political life encapsu- ‘Labourism’ in the period before ciman’s experience fits neither of lated the Liberal Party’s disastrous 1914, a feeling that ‘the Labour eth century, these extreme interpretations. It evolution. At the time of his first Party and not the Liberal, was the was not easy for a young MP, even appointment to government office, party for working men to belong the decline one seen as ‘unquestionably the best as Parliamentary Secretary to the to’.11 Another way of looking at the of the British speaker among young Liberals’,13 Local Government Board in Decem- problem is to suggest that Liberals to stand out after 1906 in the array ber 1905, the Liberal Party which would struggle to survive in a situ- Liberal Party. of talent making up what has been Runciman represented stood on the ation where voting was going to described as ‘the most able and bril- verge of the greatest triumph of its be increasingly determined by the liant [government] in British his- entire history. The following month question of class. tory’.14 Nonetheless, Runciman the party secured a landslide gen- But against this pessimistic view made steady progress. Promoted to eral election victory. The Liberals later historians saw in Edward- the position of Financial Secretary won 400 seats in the new House of ian Britain a very much brighter to the Treasury in January 1907, he Commons. Their major opponents, political outlook for the Liberals. entered the Cabinet as President the Conservative/Unionist Party, Their most distinguished spokes- of the Board of Education in April secured just 157. As the two minor man is probably Peter Clarke.

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