THE LIBERAL PARTY AND thE CONSTITUTION The preamble to the 1911 Parliament Act refers to the creation of ‘a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of a hereditary basis’ –an aim still not achieved almost a century later. Yet perhaps the received wisdom – that an elected House of Lords was Mr Punch, 28 Asquith’s unfinished December 1910: The chance of a business – is mistaken. lifetime Vernon Bogdanor Our Mr Asquith: ‘Five hundred argues that the coronets, dirt- cheap! This line Liberals regarded the of goods ought to make business a arrangements of 1911 bit brisker, what?’ as a final settlement of Our Mr Lloyd the second-chamber George: ‘Not half; bound to go like question. hot cakes’ 6 Journal of Liberal History 54 Spring 2007 THE LIBERAL PARTY AND thE CONSTITUTION N THE great days of liberal councils or parliaments elected a popular instead of a hereditary hegemony before 1914, on the basis of popular suffrage basis’. Indeed, one commentator Liberal governments were – And this is the root of the It has has referred to recent attempts strongly associated with incomparable strength of the to secure House of Lords reform the idea of constitutional English Body Politic.1 become a as ‘Mr Asquith’s Unfinished Ireform. Whigs and Liberals Business’.2 were prominent in the cam- Above all, it was a Liberal gov- common- It is, however, by no means paign for expansion of the ernment which in 1911 passed clear that the Parliament Act franchise, while Gladstone the Parliament Act limiting the place that was in fact unfinished busi- devoted his third and fourth power of the House of Lords, the 1906 ness, that the Liberals genuinely administrations to the struggle and radically reshaping the intended to proceed to what for Irish Home Rule. Liber- constitution. Liberal would now be termed a phase als campaigned hard for local It has become a common- two of further reform of the government reform to provide place that the 1906 Liberal gov- govern- Lords. There are strong grounds for local self-government, a ernment was more successful in for believing that most Liberals campaign which culminated its social and economic reforms ment was regarded the Parliament Act as in the Parish Councils Act of – old age pensions, redistributive more a final settlement of the second 1894 providing for the establish- taxation and national insurance chamber question. ment of elective parish councils. – than in constitutional reform. success- Of that Act, a great Continen- The Asquith government failed ~ tal constitutional lawyer, Josef to secure an agreed settlement ful in its Redlich, declared: in Ireland and failed to secure The idea of the suspensory veto, Home Rule All Round. They social and the basis of the Parliament Act, The grand principle of repre- did not succeed in meeting the economic derives from the utilitarian, sentative democracy has now demands of the suffragettes for James Mill, father of John Stu- been fully applied to local gov- votes for women – an essentially reforms art Mill, who was the first to ernment – England has created liberal cause, one might have propose it in 1836. John Bright for herself ‘self government’ in thought. They did not reform than in was the first politician to give it the true sense of the word. She the electoral system when they public support in 1883 at a meet- has secured self government had the chance, and they did not consti- ing of the Federation of Liberal – that is to say, the right of her secure what the Parliament Act tutional Associations at Leeds. Bright was people to legislate, to deliber- in its preamble referred to as ‘a supported by Joseph Chamber- ate, and to administer through Second Chamber constituted on reform lain, although of course, in 1911, Journal of Liberal History 54 Spring 2007 7 THE libERal PARTY AND THE CONstitUtiON Chamberlain, by then a Union- The sus- or to introduce it by stages. It committed to policies far ist, was to take a very different is noticeable that the 1906 Lib- removed from the spirit of the view, proving to be a last-ditch pensory eral government, which com- Gladstonian period, which, defender of the absolute veto of manded a large overall majority by destroying the old aristo- the House of Lords. veto would in the House of Commons, cratic settlement, had sought to The suspensory veto would made no attempt to introduce a remove obstacles to individual not, however, have become not, how- Home Rule bill. advancement. The Liberals were Liberal policy without the ever, have In 1908, Asquith, a leading becoming committed to policies personal intervention of Sir advocate of the Ripon com- of social welfare and state assist- Henry Campbell-Banner- become mittee’s proposal for a joint ance, policies which Gladstone man, Liberal Prime Minister conference rather than the sus- would have dubbed ‘construc- from 1905 to 1908. For, in 1907, Liberal pensory veto, succeeded the tionist’ and to which he would a Cabinet committee chaired dying Campbell-Bannerman have been strongly opposed. by Lord Ripon recommended policy as Prime Minister. It is a para- These policies – old age pen- that disputes between the two without dox that it was he who was to sions, redistributive taxation and chambers be settled not by a introduce the suspensory veto national insurance – demanded suspensory veto, but by a joint the per- in 1911. The issue was decided, legislative efficiency, the speedy conference between the Com- as so often happens in politics, translation of ministers’ wishes mons and the Lords. The mov- sonal less by the wishes of politicians into law. The action of the Lords ing spirit behind this report than by electoral vicissitudes. in rejecting the ‘People’s Budget’ was the Chancellor of the interven- For, in the January 1910 general of 1909 showed the dangers Exchequer, H. H. Asquith. But tion of election, the Liberals lost their which a powerful second cham- Sir Henry rejected the recom- overall majority and became ber could pose against measures mendation of his own Cabinet Sir Henry dependent upon the Irish Par- involving redistributive taxation. committee, insisting upon the liamentary Party and Labour. Thus, the Asquith government, suspensory veto. The Liberal Campbell- The Ripon plan would have like Attlee’s after 1945, sought Cabinet was by no means happy been rejected both by the Irish, to ensure that Parliament acted with this solution, and the For- Banner- who insisted upon the suspen- more speedily in getting legisla- eign Secretary, Sir Edward man. sory veto in order to secure tion on to the statute book. Grey, declared that it was ‘open Home Rule, and by Labour. This was, of course, a con- to the charge of being in effect a The only other party which siderable departure from the Single Chamber plan and from might have supported the attitudes of nineteenth-century a Single Chamber, I believe Ripon plan would have been Liberals, or, for that matter, of the country would recoil’.3 the Conservatives. Had the Liberal Democrats today, who This remark was prescient only Constitutional Conference of are concerned with securing in part. It is true that the 1911 1910, or the Lloyd George coali- effective checks and balances in Parliament Act established, for tion proposals of the same year, a constitution whose condition most practical purposes, single- succeeded, possibly the Ripon approaches what Lord Hailsham chamber government, but it plan would have been resur- famously called an ‘elective does not seem as if the country rected. But, after the Constitu- dictatorship’. In 1911, how- has in fact recoiled from it. tional Conference broke down ever, Liberals could not afford The division of opinion on the issue of whether Home to allow delays to redistribu- between those Liberals who Rule should be treated as a tive measures from an unrepre- favoured the suspensory veto ‘constitutional’ or an ‘ordinary’ sentative upper house. Nor did and those who preferred the issue, Asquith had no choice but rank-and-file Liberals wish to Ripon proposal of a joint con- to adopt the suspensory veto if reform the Lords so that it could ference coincided broadly, he wished to retain the support become a more effective check though by no means com- of the Irish Parliamentary Party. on the people’s will. From this pletely, with the division in the It may be argued, therefore, point of view, there must be party between the left-wing, that the current powers of the serious doubt as to whether the radical ‘Little Englanders’, and House of Lords owe more to notorious preamble in the 1911 the Liberal Imperialists. The the Irish Party, most of whose Parliament Act, committing radicals wanted the suspen- members sought nothing more the Liberals to establishing a sory veto partly because they than a quick departure from the ‘popular’ rather than a ‘heredi- wanted to secure Irish Home House of Commons, than to tary’ chamber, was seriously Rule. The Liberal Imperialists, any reasoned assessment of the intended. Indeed, the pream- by contrast, tended to the view proper functions of a second ble seems to have been inserted that the commitment to Home chamber. mainly ‘to appease Sir Edward Rule was holding the party Admittedly there was, by Grey’, who remained deeply back, and sought, if not to jet- 1910, a further factor. The Lib- concerned about ‘single-cham- tison it, at least to postpone it eral government was becoming ber government’.4 But, having 8 Journal of Liberal History 54 Spring 2007 THE libERal PARTY AND THE CONstitUtiON largely destroyed the power of a was, ironically, a Liberal govern- declared, obiter, that an act of hereditary chamber to obstruct ment which helped to pave the parliament purporting to abol- progressive legislation, the way for the elective dictatorship ish the House of Lords by using Liberals were hardly likely to which Liberal Democrats today the Parliament Acts would not construct a second chamber seek to check.