Asquith (22 page)

In addition, however far he himself might have been from secession, he saw a danger that many important Liberal supporters might do precisely this unless they could be assured of the strength of the moderate wing. Lord Durham
¹
; for instance, wrote to Asquith from Newmarket on July 2nd saying that he wished to attend the dinner as “ a silent supporter.” “ I hate politics,” he continued; “ but, of course, am interested in the future of Liberalism. . . . But, I shall not assist, with my money, an opposition which does not recognise its duty to the Empire in preference to a desire to make itself disagreeable to the present Government.”
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¹
_{1855-1928, the grandson of “Radical Jack.” His letter sounded as though he might have inherited more of the wealth than of the radicalism of his forbear.}

So the plans for the dinner proceeded. Then, at the last moment, Rosebery threw an extraordinarily timed spanner into the Liberal
Imperialist works. When asked to preside at the dinner he had declined, perhaps wisely from everybody’s point of view. And when asked to speak at the annual meeting of the City Liberal Club at lunch-time on the same day he had also declined, accompanying this latter refusal with an anti “ methods of barbarism ” manifesto which was published in
The Times
on July 17th. Then, unnecessarily and unexpectedly, he had turned up at the luncheon meeting after all and had delivered a provocative, headline-catching speech. The result was, as a
Times
leader commented the next day, that “ the attention of the public, which was fixed beforehand on the late Home Secretary, has been suddenly turned to the late Prime Minister.”

The Liberal Party, Rosebery said, must “ start with a clean slate as regards those cumbersome programmes with which (it was) overloaded in the past.” As for himself: “ I must plough my furrow alone. That is my fate, agreeable or the reverse; but before I get to the end of that furrow it is possible that I may find myself not alone.” This intervention led even Grey to deliver a sharp public remonstrance. It had been made at so ill-chosen a time as to suggest that some hidden vein of jealousy of Asquith’s leadership of the Liberal right must suddenly have risen to the surface of Rosebery’s complex character. Why otherwise should he have departed, in a manner so likely to steal Asquith’s thunder, from his normal practice of giving weeks of prior build-up to his infrequent speeches? Yet on the following day he was writing to Asquith, blandly, admiringly, but without apology or apparent embarrassment:

The Durdans
,

Epsom

July 20 1901

My dear A,

I have just finished reading the banquet speeches,
¹
each and all of them with admiration. But yours is by far your finest and most complete speech, and you know how greatly I admire all your speeches. It seems to me faultless, and will I think rank as one of the memorable speeches of our time.

The others too were all excellent. I hope with all my heart that you and your following will be able to control the Liberal party in the right direction. Indeed I think you may, for you have
the cream of the ability of the party, and your banquet has wiped out the National Reform Union.

One word more. There will be attempts (I see them beginning) to separate you and me. I do not mean politically for that can take care of itself, but in regard to personal friendship. Do not let them succeed, for our friendship is one of my most prized possessions.

Please give Margot my heartiest congratulations on your triumph, which I hope will cheer your suffering girl.
²

Yours,

AR.

¹
_{Grey presided and Fowler also spoke.}

²
_{Violet Asquith had been dangerously ill with infantile paralysis for the previous week, a great additional strain upon Asquith at this difficult time.}

This letter is made more puzzling by the fact that it is difficult to believe that Rosebery could greatly have approved of Asquith’s “ banquet speech.” It was in sharp—perhaps deliberate—contrast to his own oration of a few hours before. Rosebery, to justify his continued detachment, had described the attempt to paper over the Liberal cracks as “ organised hypocrisy.” Asquith had tried to reconcile his conflicting views about the desirability of the dinner by stressing the underlying unity of the party and attempting to turn attention away from the South African quarrel to the less contentious ground of home policy. Liberal Imperialism, he insisted, must be linked with a policy of radical reform for “ Little England.” The non-pejorative use of the term “ Little England ” was in itself something of an emollient to the other wing of the party, and the speech as a whole smoothed some of the feathers which had been ruffled by the preparations for the dinner. “ A dangerous comer was thus turned,” Asquith’s official biographers commented.
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But the stretch of road which came into sight did not look particularly promising. The temporary discord between Rosebery and the other leading Liberal Imperialists did nothing to bring them closer to Campbell-Bannerman; it merely made the disarray of the Liberal Party look even more complete. The prospect of a return to power seemed almost infinitely remote. “ Some day if you are as long-lived as many of our tough politicians have been,” Arthur Acland (no doubt trying to strike a cheerful note) wrote to Asquith, “ there will be changes and even perhaps
a Liberal Government though it is difficult to see what it could do in such a Tory country as England now is.”
^u

This was not quite the nadir of Liberal fortunes. With Parliament in recess the later months of 1901 passed fairly quietly, although one or two shots were exchanged between the leaders of the two factions in their autumn speeches. The noise of these was soon drowned in the vast rumble of advance publicity which Rosebery succeeded in building up for a speech which he was to deliver to the Chesterfield Liberal Association on December 16th. For several weeks beforehand the newspapers were full of contradictory rumours about what he was going to say; but they all agreed that he was going to say something which would give a new twist to politics. When the day came he succeeded in giving two new twists. On South Africa he outflanked his Liberal Imperialist lieutenants from the left. He had never fully shared their enthusiasm for Milner, and this enabled him to come out more firmly for a negotiated peace as opposed to unconditional surrender than they had been prepared to do. At the same time, he opened up a new cause of Liberal schism. The party was not only told once again to “ clean its slate ” but was also instructed to put away its “ fly-blown phylacteries.” Not surprisingly in view of its almost total lack of meaning the significance of this latter phrase was not at first appreciated. Campbell-Bannerman, indeed, was sufficiently encouraged by the note of conciliation on South Africa to call upon Rosebery in the following week and seek a rapprochement. He was quickly disillusioned, for during this interview Rosebery made it clear to the Liberal leader (as he was to do to the public in a speech at Liverpool on February 14th) that by “ fly-blown phylacteries he meant most of the Newcastle programme, and in particular, Home Rule for Ireland. “ (I) stated definitely that I could have nothing further to do with Mr. Gladstone’s policy,” Rosebery recorded in his own note of the interview
.
^v

This was an impossible position for Bannerman. Apart from his own convictions, which were strong on the subject, he had just publicly re-committed himself to the old policy on Home Rule in a speech at Dunfermline. He automatically excluded co-operation with Rosebery on these terms. “ But where are the acolytes?,” he wrote to J. A. Spender on January 1st, 1902. “Ronald F. (Munro Ferguson, the former Scottish whip) is making speeches calling on Liberals to elect between R. and me who are irreconcilably at variance on the war.

Haldane tramps in his heavy way along the same path. I believe Grey also will follow it. Will Asquith? I never hear anything of or from him.”
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w;

1
_{This last sentence is strong evidence against the view, sedulously fostered by Spender himself in his biographies both of Campbell-Bannerman and of Asquith, that throughout even the periods of greatest strain relations between his two subjects remained both close and friendly. And there were other indications of acerbity at this stage. “ Whoever may propose the amendment to the Address it will certainly not be Asquith,” Bannerman wrote early in January. (Spender,}

In fact “ the acolytes ” were more firmly with Rosebery than for some time past. Grey wrote to Campbell-Bannerman on January 2nd threatening to repudiate his leadership unless he fully accepted the views on the South African War which Rosebery had put forward at Chesterfield. But at least this was an old issue. Even more depressingly for Liberal imity, Haldane wrote to Asquith from Scotland on January 5th raising the new issue. He was vehemently in favour of Rosebery moving from the generality of “ fly-blown phylacteries ” to an explicit anti-Home Rule statement provided that it was held up for a month or so—which was precisely what happened. “ The feeling is pretty strong up here that such a declaration ought to come,” he concluded.

Asquith was more cautious, but he was moving in the same direction. He made no attempt to prevent the widening of the Liberal gap during that winter. On January 14th he made an intransigent speech saying that the Boers must be convinced “ of the finality of the result and the hopelessness of ever renewing the struggle,” and he suggested to the Liberal Unionists that Rosebery’s policy of the “ clean slate ” might make it easier for them to re-enter the party. On January 23 rd he abstained from voting on the main opposition amendment to the Address, despite the fact that he had been closely involved in deciding upon its compromise wording.

Then, on March 1st, a week after Rosebery had written to
The Times
explicitly and even brutally repudiating Campbell-Bannerman’s leadership,
⁴
Asquith explained his own position in a long open letter

to his constituents. Like almost all of his pronouncements this was moderate in form. But it leaned heavily towards Rosebery in substance, and amounted to a considered repudiation of Campbell-Bannerman by the man who was nominally his first lieutenant in the House of Commons. He commended the Chesterfield speech and said that it defined a common ground upon which, at this stage of the conflict, the great majority of Liberals were able to meet. In late December this might have been conciliatory. But in early March, when the leader of the party had made it quite clear that it was not ground upon which he could stand, it was the reverse. Asquith then dealt with Home Rule. He did not disavow Gladstone, but he said that even his
⁴⁴
magnificent courage, unrivalled authority and unquenchable enthusiasm ” had been unable to overcome the repugnance of a large majority of British people to the question of a Dublin Parliament. And in the eight years which had elapsed since 1893 their opinion had hardened:

If we are to be honest, we must ask ourselves this practical question.

Is it to be part of the policy and programme of our party that, if returned to power, it will introduce into the House of Commons a bill for Irish Home Rule. The answer, in my judgment, is No. . . . Because the history of these years. . . has made it plain that the ends which we have always had, and still have, in view —the reconciliation of Ireland to the Empire and the relief of the Imperial Parliament (not as regards Ireland alone) from a load of unnecessary burdens—can only be attained by methods which will carry with them, step by step, the sanction and sympathy of British opinion. To recognise facts like these is not apostasy; it is common sense.

In addition, in the last days of February, the Liberal Imperialist Council was replaced by the much more formidable Liberal League. Rosebery was president, and Asquith, Grey and Fowler were vice-
presidents. The policy object of the League was to promote Liberal Imperialist ideas and the doctrine of the “ clean slate.” Its organisational object was less clear. Rosebery said it was to prevent “ his friends being drummed out of the Liberal Party.” There were others who feared it might have more aggressive and schismatic tendencies. These fears were encouraged when the Liberal organiser in the Home Counties was appointed chief agent of the League, with the suggestion that part of his job might be the promotion of candidatures.

Campbell-Bannerman, who for several weeks past had believed a split was as likely as not and had concerted plans with the Chief Whip as to what to do when it occurred, made it clear that the promotion of candidatures would be for him the breaking point. Asquith at least had no desire to force such a rupture. In a speech at St. Leonards-on-Sea on March 14th he announced that “ he would have nothing to do with any aggressive movement against his fellow-Liberals, he would have nothing to do with any attempt to destroy or weaken the general organisation of the party.”

Almost accidentally this speech marked the turning point in the Liberal Party’s quarrels. During the latter part of March most of the Liberal members associated with the League fell into line with Asquith’s limited interpretation of its functions. But the more significant pressures towards Liberal unity came from outside. On March 24th the Government presented to Parliament a highly controversial Education Bill. On April 14th Sir Michael Hicks-Beach introduced his last budget, which included a proposal for a duty at the rate of 1/- a bushel on imported com. On May 12th the South African War ended in the the Peace of Vereeniging. On May 23rd even Lord Rosebery made a speech of unity. After nearly eight years of Liberal schism a new era in politics was beginning.