Asquith (11 page)

Lushington, the permanent under-secretary at the Home Office, wrote a memorandum in favour of maintaining the
status quo
, which, as the Lord Chancellor pointed out, was “ not much use as no-one knew whether it could be maintained”; the Queen caused her secretary to write agitatedly asking what were Asquith’s intentions; and Harcourt, whom Asquith consulted as a former Home Secretary, wrote from Derby, where he was engaged in a “ vexatious contest ” for his re-election, suggesting that in certain circumstances Mr. Gladstone had best be consulted. This was bad advice, for Gladstone’s reply was likely to be uninterested, cloudy, and tinged with annoyance j that the new Home Secretary could not make his own decisions without !

disturbing the Prime Minister’s Irish brooding. Wisely, Asquith did | not take it. Instead he set W. H. Eldridge, a barrister whom he trusted and knew to have good trades union contacts, to find out whether a compromise solution might be acceptable to the labour leaders, and if so, exactly what form it might take. Such an approach ! Asquith believed to be necessary both because there was a genuine conflict between the unrestricted right of meeting and the interests of local shop-keepers, ’bus and cab-drivers, etc., and because he was 
anxious to establish for himself and the Government a reputation for responsibility and firmness which would not be helped by an unconditional removal of the ban.

Eldridge’s report was favourable. A limited right of meeting would be accepted by all the interested parties except for the Social Democratic Federation, and they could be ignored because they were “ only really Mr. Hyndman.” Asquith therefore proceeded along these lines and worked out a solution by which meetings could be held in daylight on Saturday afternoons, Sundays and bank holidays, provided that the police were given previous notice and their regulations as to the approach route of any procession were accepted. When a deputation from the Metropolitan Radical Federation waited upon him on October 19th he announced this solution to them, not as a tentative offer but as a firm decision, and immediately afterwards gave it general publicity. It was accepted both by the deputation and by general London opinion, and has stood until the present day.

Asquith’s solution of this potentially tiresome problem was regarded as the first success of the Government and earned him a spate of congratulation. Rosebery, who was always rather a radical in London, was particularly forthcoming. “To have pleased
The Times
and the
Star
and indeed everybody,” he wrote, “ may rank with the achievements of Hannibal in crossing the Alps or of Orpheus charming his miscellaneous congregation.” The Queen, however, did not respond with the other members of this miscellaneous congregation, but informed the Home Secretary of her dislike and distrust of the new arrangement.

Asquith’s next major decision made him less popular with radical opinion, and so far from giving the Government another triumph, led to its first parliamentary storm. In January, 1893, the Parnellite rump, under the leadership of John Redmond, raised an agitation for the release of fourteen Irish “ dynamiters,” who had been imprisoned since the early ’eighties. The Government’s majority was such that pressure from any part of its normal support was a serious matter. Nevertheless, Asquith’s review of the sentences, conducted on the austere principle that no valid distinction could be drawn between crimes of violence committed for political motives and those committed for more personal reasons, decided that no remission was desirable. “ The result of my examination,” he wrote, “ was that I was left without a shadow of doubt as to the guilt, or as to the propriety of the conviction and sentence, of any one of the prisoners
.”
^b

The Parnellites pressed the matter to the extent of putting down an amendment to the address at the opening of the Government’s first session of Parliament, and Asquith had to reply, on February 9th, in his maiden speech as a minister. This he did in an early example of what was later to be known as his “ sledge-hammer ” technique. In a long speech, he reviewed each of the cases with a devastating and unyielding logic. It was an impressive first appearance at the despatch box, but it was received with an equal if not greater enthusiasm on the other side of the House as on his own. “ Mr. Arthur (Balfour) rushed up to dinner immediately afterwards in one of his rare moods of
ringing
enthusiasm,” Mrs. Grenfell wrote to Asquith, “ and told us all about it, nearly word for word—and then I got this scribbled line from another of their side
⁴
1
know it will interest you to hear that Asquith stepped this evening into the ranks of the
very few
, the five or six men, one is proud to reckon as compatriots. His speech was magnificent, of the greatest ability and highest courage. . . . ’ I am so overjoyed and proud to hear them all
overflowing
with admiration, so proud of my little square-inch of your dear friendship,” she concluded.

The speech was also admired on the Government benches. Its arguments made it easier for some radicals to vote against the amendment. But Justin McCarthy, the leader of the anti-Parnellite Nationalists, who also had to vote for the Government if it was to survive and produce its Home Rule Bill, complained publicly that Asquith had “ shut the gates of mercy with a clang ”; and John Morley, without dissenting from the Home Secretary’s line, told him privately
^c
that he might have been less “
cassant
.”

Asquith’s next big speeches in the House (but he was not now so successful at avoiding minor ones as he had previously been: in the summer of 1893 he wrote complaining of “nearly 9 hours at the

H. of C. . . . (sitting) hour after hour through dreary discussions on Supply ”) were on February 23 rd when he introduced a Welsh Suspensory Bill, designed to pave the way for Welsh Church Disestablishment, and on April 14th when he intervened in the eight-day debate on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill. His speech on the first occasion was notable chiefly for the fact that he provoked the wrath of the Queen, who wrote to Gladstone complaining that Asquith had “ admitted ” that the Welsh bill was merely a first step to the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of England.

Gladstone sent the letter on to Asquith with the characteristic comment: “ The enclosed is in no way formidable except that it will entail on me the necessity of writing rather a long letter.” He added: “ Her Majesty’s studies have not yet carried her out of the delusive belief that she is still by law the ‘ head ’ of the Church of England.”
^c
The Welsh Bill was not proceeded with at this stage owing to the rapacious demands on time made by the Irish one.

Asquith’s connection with the Home Rule Bill was not an intimate one. He had not been a member of the Cabinet committee (Gladstone, Morley, Spencer, Herschell, Campbell-Bannerman and Bryce) which drafted it, but his name was printed on its back because of his departmental position. Partly for this reason and partly because of his debating strength he was asked to speak on second reading. But once he had done so, and delivered what
The Times
described as “ perhaps as good a case for his clients as anyone who had yet spoken on the same side,” his responsibilities were mostly at an end. Gladstone, indeed, was himself so indefatigable throughout the long committee stage that even Morley, let alone ministers less directly concerned, was largely overshadowed. Nevertheless Asquith had to be present throughout most of this parliamentary struggle, magnificent as a last display of Gladstone’s fighting powers but dismal because of the general conviction that ultimate failure was inevitable. His attendance was dictated not only by the narrowness of the Government’s majority but also by the practice of the time, which demanded from ministers a much more constant House of Commons attendance on subjects other than their own than is usual today.
¹

¹
 “ When I am ill,” said Harcourt, “ I am in bed. When I am not, I am in the House of Commons ”; but he was an even more assiduous parliamentarian than most of his contemporaries.

The bill completed its slow progress through the House of Commons early on the morning of September 2nd, when it received a third reading by a vote of 307 to 267. Six days later the peers refused it a second reading by 419 to 41, proportionately the worst showing, on a major question, which any Government has ever made in the House of Lords. Gladstone was for an immediate dissolution on the issue, but he could not carry his colleagues with him. They thought that, in the phrase of the time, “ the cup had to be filled up ” with English rather than Irish legislation before the electorate could be appealed to with any hope of success; and Asquith, despite the fact 
that an Employers’ Liability Bill,
¹
to which he had devoted great effort during the session, had been so mangled by the Lords that abandonment seemed the better course, fully agreed with the majority of the Cabinet. Gladstone was therefore forced to acquiesce, although the combined result of the Lords’ vote and his colleagues’ reaction to it was a fatal blow to his last political hopes. His premiership continued for another six months, but its purpose and authority came effectively to an end on September 8th, 1893.

¹
 _{It was designed to get rid of the last traces of the doctrine of common employment, by which a workman was inhibited from suing an employer for injury suffered as a result of the negligence of a fellow employee.}

Asquith was occupied during part of that summer and autumn with a particularly nasty “ law and order ” incident. A protracted coal strike in the North of England led to sporadic rioting and some damage to property in parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire. The local magistrates asked for police reinforcements. Asquith transmitted their requests to other local police forces and also, in his capacity as head of the Metropolitan force, sent 400 London policemen to the area. This led to no improvement in the situation, and the magistrates began to send repeated requests to the Home Office for the use of troops. On September 3rd the Home Secretary sanctioned such an application, and a platoon of the Queen’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry was present at Featherstone colliery, near Wakefield, four days later. Asquith’s own account of what then occurred is as follows:

A magistrate was present with the troops; he made no fewer than seven appeals to the crowd, who were armed with sticks and bludgeons, to discontinue the work of destruction, much valuable property being already ablaze; the Riot Act was read; a bayonet charge was unavailingly made; and as the defensive position held by the small detachment of soldiers (fewer than thirty men) was becoming untenable, and the complete destruction of the colliery was imminent, the magistrate gave orders to the commander to fire. Two men on the fringe of the crowd were unfortunately killed.
^e

The two Coroner’s juries which held inquests on the dead men came to different conclusions. The one thought that there had been sufficient reason for the troops to open fire, the other not. The incident was first raised in the House of Commons on September 20th, the day before the adjournment after the continuous sittings of the summer.

Asquith gave a firm reply insisting that the responsibility for the preservation of order lay with the local authorities and that it would have been wrong, with the less adequate information at his disposal, to have refused their requests. He did not attempt to judge between the conflicting verdicts of the two juries. For this purpose, and to investigate the whole matter, he set up a Special Commission composed of Bowen, Haldane, and Sir Albert Rollit, a Tory M.P. and solicitor. This Commission heard evidence at Wakefield and produced a report which was notable to the public for completely exonerating the magistrates, officers and troops, and to lawyers for formulating with great precision the respective duties of the civil and military authorities at times of public disorder.

This was not the end of the matter. Had Asquith not been so “
cassant
” he might have chosen a less intellectually distinguished but more politically appeasing Commission. But that was not the way his mind worked. He saw no harm in appointing his closest friend as the one “ left-wing ” member, or his old master as the chairman, because it did not occur to him that they could be other than impartial, and he did not see why it should occur to others either. It was an example of his persistent tendency to be a little too concerned with what may be called “ Athenaeum opinion ” and not sufficiently concerned with a more general and less urbane public. In any event “ Featherstone ” pursued him throughout the middle years of his career and earned him a measure of working class unpopularity much as “ Tonypandy ” did with Winston Churchill nearly a generation later. “ Why did you murder the miners at Featherstone in ’92? ” someone shouted at him at a meeting many years afterwards. “ It was not ’92, it was ’93,” was his characteristic reply.

The cool determination with which he discharged most of his judicial duties at the Home Office did not extend to his decisions about the reprieve of murderers. To say that he was an “ abolitionist ” Home Secretary would be to misunderstand either the state of public opinion at the time or Asquith’s desire to run ahead of it. He was not a man for the pursuit of hopeless causes. But he disliked the death penalty, both because of its presumptuous finality and because of its ghoulish associations; and his responsibility for the exercise of the prerogative of mercy caused him great unease. One of the most difficult cases concerned a man who was hanged at Liverpool Jail on January 4th, 1893. The nature of the crime was not such as to raise the 
question of a reprieve, but there was persistent doubt as to identity. Was the man who was to be hanged the murderer? Asquith wrote Mrs. Horner an anguished letter on January 3rd, but he did not halt the processes of the law. Later, he told his daughter, he received a letter from the priest who had taken the condemned man’s last confession, telling him that he had nothing with which to reproach himself. When this story was published by Lady Violet Bonham Carter
^f
some time after her father’s death, it aroused a storm of Roman Catholic protest. The letter was not left amongst Asquith’s papers.