Asquith (50 page)

Asquith’s three days at Balmoral was one of a series of political visits which the King had organised for that autumn. As Crewe, who was one of the first guests, put it to Asquith: “ He is. .. haunted . .. by the feeling that if he does not take off his coat and work for a settlement of some kind, and there is serious loss of life after the Bill passes, he will not only be held responsible by Opposition partisans, but will actually be so to some extent.”
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1
Later in the month Crewe was succeeded by Churchill as minister in attendance, and this visit overlapped with one by Bonar Law. The two visitors had a long talk together, which was reported by Churchill to Asquith and by Bonar Law to Lansdowne and Carson. There was no direct contradiction between these accounts, but Churchill’s implied a less cautious conversation than did Bonar Law’s. Law summed up his attitude by writing to Carson: “ The whole question as to the exclusion of Ulster really turns upon this—whether or not it would be regarded as a betrayal by the solid body of Unionists in the South and West.”* But Churchill spoke of “ the spirit of courage and goodwill ” with which Bonar Law had expressed his desire for a settlement; of his desire first for secret meetings between one or two on each side and then for a regular conference; and of the possibility that this might even lead to a revival of the old 1910 coalition scheme. As a result of this “ remarkable conversation ” Churchill was swept along by a wave of enthusiasm for a conference and for compromise. He reminded Asquith how he and Lloyd George had originally pressed the exclusion of Ulster upon the
Cabinet and how “ Loreburn (had) repulsed us in the most bloodthirsty manner.”
²

¹
_{Crewe also wrote that “ the King was sedulous, even in talking to me very intimately, to express no opinion against Home Rule; ‘ it might be a very good thing ’ and anyhow ‘ some form of it is evidently now necessary, as a majority in Parliament favours it
(Asquith Papers
, box
38,
ff.
126-7).}

²
_{This was a thrust calculated to win Asquith’s sympathy. Loreburn (formerly Sir Robert Reid) had been Lord Chancellor when the Bill was being drafted. He had left the Government in June, 1912, and fifteen months later, with a typical elder statesman’s show of non-partisan wisdom, he had embarrassed and irritated his former colleagues by writing to
The Times
to propound exactly the solution which he had so strongly opposed from inside.}

For the moment Churchill could see moderation in everyone, and four days later he wrote again to Asquith:

I have been agreeably surprised by the character of my talks with the King. He is of course all for a conference and for a settlement on the basis of excluding Ulster for a time. But I found him more reasonable and able to see both sides on the Irish question than on others I have sometimes discussed with him: and nothing in his conversation gives the slightest countenance to an unconstitutional intervention by the Crown.
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The next report which Asquith received from Balmoral came from Birrell on October 3rd:

There is a considerable change ... in the constitutional atmosphere, so I think your efforts have had a bracing effect and got rid of some dangerous matter.. .. When I first came it was all conference. . .
.
ⁿ

Even so, it was obvious to Asquith that the time had come when he should try to talk to the Unionist leaders. Even if agreement proved impossible (and he was much less sanguine than Churchill) it was important to show the King, and even some members of the Cabinet, that he had at least tried. Accordingly, he wrote from Balmoral on October 8th:

Dear Mr. Bonar Law,

Churchill has reported to me the substance of a conversation he had with you here last month.

You will probably agree with me that anything in the nature of a “ Conference ” (as proposed for instance by Lord Loreburn) between the leaders of parties is under existing conditions out of the question, whatever may be the case hereafter.

I understand, however, the suggestion thrown out by you to

Churchill to be that an informal conversation of a strictly confidential character between yourself and myself—with perhaps another colleague on either side—might be useful as a first step towards the possible avoidance of danger to the State, which all responsible statesmen must be equally anxious to avert.

I write, therefore, to say that (if you are still in the same mind)

I should be happy to take part without delay in a conversation so conditioned.

I shall be back in London on Friday night and shall remain there for the best part of a week. Perhaps you would kindly address your reply to Downing Street.

Yours very truly,

H. H. Asquith
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The coolness of tone was accounted for by the fact that Asquith hardly knew Bonar Law, and had no great liking for what he knew. The caution of the proposal (combined with a determination to pin upon Law the responsibility for the initiative) arose from Asquith’s conviction that any compromise plan must be suggested by the opposition and not by himself. The Government’s bill, supported by a majority in the House of Commons, was on the table. It was not for him to tell the opposition what he would give them for threatening to break the law—particularly as he thought they would always ask for more. But if the opposition chose to state what provisions, within a general Home Rule framework, would meet the Ulster problem, that was a different matter. This fencing to avoid the initiative was an important factor in the negotiations of the next few months.

Bonar Law, after consulting Lansdowne, agreed to the meeting and suggested Cherkley Court, “ the house of a friend of mine, Sir .Max Aitken ” as an appropriate rendezvous. “ It is about an hour by motor from London,” he added, “ it is quite isolated and the only risk of publicity would be through the servants which in this case would not be great.
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Asquith agreed to the arrangement, and after luncheon on Wednesday, October 14th, he drove out to meet the leader of the opposition. “ He arrived,” so Mr. Robert Blake informs us, “ to find Bonar Law, characteristically, engaged in a game of double dummy with his host—the need for secrecy precluding a four.”
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Unlike Bonar Law himself on a later and equally famous (but probably more apocryphal) occasion Asquith showed neither surprise
nor annoyance at this frivolous exhibition.
⁸
Instead, motivated by a mixture of shyness and good manners, he plunged into almost anecdotal talk. “ I had a conversation with Mr. Asquith which lasted for about an hour,” Bonar Law severely recorded. “ The conversation was very frank, but the larger part of it quite irrelevant, dealing, for instance, with personalities in the House of Commons and general subjects of that kind.. . . ”
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The substance of the interview was recorded by Asquith in some pencilled notes written on the following day. They do not differ greatly from Bonar Law’s account, except that this included a long discussion about a general election which did not figure at all in the Prime Minister’s document. Asquith found Bonar Law more sympathetic in private than he had done in public. The Unionist leader was obviously frank: he admitted to doubts about his extreme commitment to Carson; he said that most of the English Conservatives cared more about preserving the Welsh Establishment than about the Home Rule issue; and he made no attempt to conceal the electoral importance to him of “ the Orange card ”—without it he thought the Unionists would lose again. He stressed his trouble with the “ ex-diehards ” on the one hand, and his difficulties with Lansdowne on the other. Law’s sadly pessimistic outlook rather cheered Asquith. He felt a new magnanimity towards him. The difficulties of the Unionist leader were so enormous that Asquith became relatively encouraged about his own position. According to Law’s account, he even indulged in some comforting reflections about his strength
vis-á-vis
the Irish Nationalists.

Nothing very concrete emerged from this meeting. Asquith understood (for the first time) that Bonar Law would accept Home
Rule with an Ulster exclusion provided that Lansdowne as the spokesman of the “ loyalists ” of the South and West did not protest too strongly. But “ Ulster ” was not defined, although the difficulties of definition were touched upon and recognised by both sides. There was no discussion about the permanency or otherwise of exclusion. “We had a good deal of more general and informal conversation" Asquith concluded, “ and in the end I said that after reflection and consideration I would communicate with him again. ”
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Asquith’s next meeting with Bonar Law was on November 6th, again at Cherkley. As on the previous occasion, he afterwards made a pencilled note. The impression given is that, so far from there being a steady move towards agreement, the previous meeting might never have taken place; both leaders spent much of the time traversing familiar ground, often repeating themselves, occasionally contradicting themselves, but never showing much awareness that they had been there before:

I saw and talked with B.L. for best part of an hour.

We agreed that on both sides—his and mine—opinion was stiffening among the rank and file, and that the idea of compromise and even conference, was regarded with growing disfavour and suspicion.

We discussed (without prejudice) the suggestion of a general election before the next session of Parliament opens. I gave my reasons for holding that—if an agreed settlement of the Irish question was to be desired—such a procedure was the most dangerous expedient that could be risked.... He said . . . that unless (of which he saw no prospect) there was a sweeping swing of the electoral pendulum in favour of his side, the best that could be hoped. . . would be such a comparatively balanced state of parties as would make compromise inevitable. I rejoined that.. . it would (in such an event), after all the bad blood of an embittered election, be more difficult than now.

I said that I was no more a plenipotentiary than he was; that I was not even a bearer of proposals: that I might, probably, be able to carry my own Cabinet and Party with me, in any form of settlement that in the end I deliberately pressed upon them; but that I could not (in their present and prospective temper) answer even for that, and still less for the Irish Nationalists, whose leaders, of the old guard, had hanging on their flank and rear the
new and bolder spirits of which Devlin is the type. I added that I had no doubt he was in similar difficulties. He replied frankly that he was not sure that his were not even greater; he had to reckon not only with Carsonism (not Carson himself), but with a probable revival of a diehard ” movement among the English Unionists.

These reservations having been duly made, I said we might proceed on the hypothetical basis that a Home Rule Parliament and Executive was to be set up in Dublin for Ireland,
minus
an area to be at least temporarily excluded which might provisionally be called “ Ulster ”—the actual definition of Ulster for this purpose being for the moment postponed.

How was it suggested that this area should be dealt with? (i) As regards legislation. (2) As regards administration and finance. He dismissed as unacceptable all schemes for giving it a local legislature and executive of its own.

(1) As regards Legislation. This, he said, must remain with the Imperial Parliament. The Ulster men could not (without sacrificing their root principle) recognise any other
law-making
power. At this point we discussed the question of the conditions of exclusion. His view was that the excluded area should have the option
(as a whole)
of voting by plebiscite, after the expiration of a prescribed time, for inclusion. (He repudiated immediate inclusion with an option of exemption.)

(2) As regards Administration and Finance. I pointed out that in respect of Land and Police there was no difficulty, as under the Home Rule Bill these are reserved services which remain, at any rate for a time, in the hands of the Imperial Executive.... He said that the dropping of the proposed Irish Post Office (which under the plan of exclusion would be something of an absurdity) would give great satisfaction to Unionists. I said I had never attached the least importance to the postal provisions in the Bill.

We then came to the question of the geographical definition of the excluded area. He said that Carson would stand out in the first instance for the whole province of Ulster. I urged that this was quite out of the question: in three counties, (Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan) the Nationalists were in an overwhelming preponderance, and in two more (Tyrone and Fermanagh) there was a fairly even balance—Protestants being to Catholics in
the proportion of about 6 to 5. As to the three first-mentioned he agreed that they could not be separated from the rest of Ireland. But he was disposed to insist on Tyrone and Fermanagh....

We agreed that any settlement come to must be acquiesced in by both parties in the State at least until it had had a fair trial....

In the end I said that I would report the substance of our conversation to my colleagues in the Cabinet next Tuesday, and if they approved of the matter going on, confidential steps might be taken by Mr. Birrell to sound the Nationalists leaders. We parted in good will but in no very sanguine spirit.