Mr Balfour's Poodle (14 page)

At this stage the plan was to take the resolutions, then obtain a first reading for a Parliament Bill based on them, and immediately afterwards to begin again with the Budget. The Budget remained an adventure for the Government, because the Irish, although now offered precedence for the veto over reform, were still unwilling to commit themselves to sinking financial differences without an assurance that a Lords' rejection of the resolutions would be followed by a demand for the exercise of the prerogative, backed if necessary by a determination to dissolve again. This Asquith was still unable or unwilling to give. On March 3, when asked by a Unionist member what he would do if these circumstances arose, he had first used a famous phrase, which he was later to repeat on a number of occasions. ‘We had better wait and see,' Hansard recorded the Prime Minister as saying.

The resolutions were exhaustively debated at their various stages in the House of Commons, and were eventually got through, by a free use of the closure, after eleven parliamentary days. Government majorities varied somewhat, but the general pattern was given by the vote rejecting a Unionist amendment to Asquith's motion to go into committee on the resolutions. A ‘No' lobby of 351 was made up of 256 Liberals, thirty-four Labour members, sixty-five of Redmond's Nationalists and two Independent Nationalists. On the other side were 250—all Unionists. It was generally agreed that this and other highly satisfactory Government majorities meant that the Cabinet had at last made up its mind to satisfy the Nationalists that it was prepared to coerce the Lords by advising the use of the prerogative. This appeared the more likely as William O'Brien, the strongly anti-Government
Independent Nationalist member for Cork City, had used the week-end before the vote to increase Redmond's difficulties by making public a private interview with Lloyd George in which, O'Brien claimed, it had become clear that substantial concessions could have been secured on the Finance Bill had the Nationalists been prepared collectively to demand them.

This widespread public impression proved to be correct.
¹
On April 15, shortly before the guillotine was due to fall on the consideration of the second resolution, the Prime Minister rose to explain the intentions of the Government if the Lords proved recalcitrant, but, the Chairman of Ways and Means having ruled that he could not do so without a general consent, which Balfour refused to give, he was forced to sit down again amidst loud conflicting demonstrations on both sides of the House. Later, when the third resolution had also been cleared and he had presented the Parliament Bill for its first reading, he made his statement on the adjournment:

‘If the Lords fail to accept our policy, or decline to consider it as it is formally presented to the House, we shall feel it our duty immediately to tender advice to the Crown as to the steps which will have to be taken if that policy is to receive statutory effect in this Parliament. What the precise terms of that advice will be—(an Hon. Member: “Ask Redmond”)—I think one might expect courtesy when I am anxious, as the head of the Government, to make a serious statement of public policy—what the precise terms of that advice will be it will, of course, not be right for me to say now; but if we do not find ourselves in a position to ensure that statutory effect
shall be given to that policy in this Parliament, we shall then either resign our offices or recommend the dissolution of Parliament. Let me add this, that in no case will we recommend a dissolution except under such conditions as will secure that in the new Parliament the judgment of the people as expressed at the elections will be carried into law.'
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Asquith was followed by Balfour, who denounced the anticipation by months of prospective advice to the Crown and charged the Prime Minister with having concluded an unworthy bargain with Redmond. ‘He has bought the Irish vote for his Budget, but the price is paid in the dignity of his office.' The brief debate terminated in great excitement, with a Nationalist and a Unionist member almost coming to blows.

Asquith replied to Balfour's charges in a letter to
The Times
published four days later. There had been no meeting between himself and Redmond after the Government's decision and before his statement, he said. In any event, it would be difficult to see in what the unworthiness of the Government action lay. Their decision was just as welcome to the majority of their followers as it was to the Nationalists, and if a decision so taken brings in its train a substantial block of support in the division lobby there is nothing inimical to the best traditions of parliamentary practice in that. Minority governments usually have to compromise with their principles to a far greater extent than did Asquith in these early months of 1910. The real truth is that the Unionists had worked themselves into a position of unusual prejudice and illogicality. They were determined, at almost all costs, to keep the Irish members against their will in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. At the same time they regarded them almost as ‘second-class citizens', and therefore viewed any majority of which these
involuntary intruders formed a decisive part as something of a fraud. It was Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy carried to its ultimate degree.

This is not to deny, of course, that Asquith's statement enabled him suddenly to become decisive about the Budget. The period of ‘wait and see' was over. He moved a ‘timetable' resolution on April 18 for the reintroduced Finance Bill and firmly declared that the fortunes of the Government and of the Liberal Party were bound up with the measure. A day and a half was to be devoted to the preliminary resolutions, two to second reading and one to third reading, while at the committee stage the only amendments permitted were to be those relating to changes which had been made in the bill since its previous passage through the Commons. The debates to which these various stages gave rise, and which began almost immediately after the ‘time-table' resolution and followed each other in quick succession, necessarily involved the flogging of very old horses. The main point of interest was the attitude of the Irish members. The Independent Nationalists remained implacable in their opposition, and O'Brien, who on a different occasion in the same week had spoken in almost Tory terms of the Chancellor of the Exchequer having decided ‘that the Irish votes should be bargained for at the expense of the King rather than the Treasury', moved the rejection of the second reading. Redmond, however, was firm in his support (one of his followers, Joseph Devlin, who spoke on third reading, reminding O'Brien that there were other people in Ireland besides landlords and distillers), and the motion to reject was defeated by 328 to 242, a majority only a little smaller than that which had been secured in the first division on the veto resolutions. Third reading was obtained on April 27 by 324 to 231.

On the next day the bill was taken into consideration in the Lords. Here the second reading debate lasted only three hours. Lord Lansdowne made a few old points about the national credit and negotiations with the Irish, and Lord Russell
¹
some new ones about motor cars; the Lord Chancellor replied for the Government; and that was about all. There was no division, and the remaining stages passed without debate. On this issue at least the Lords were prepared to accept the fact that they had been defeated in the appeal to the country which they had forced. It needed only another twenty-four hours to secure the Royal Assent, and the Finance Bill of 1909 therefore passed into law precisely a year after Lloyd George had opened the Budget upon which it was based.

During the difficult weeks at the end of March, Ministers had not only had the tasks of deciding upon the order in which they were going to proceed and of agreeing to the form of the veto resolutions. There had also to be produced an acceptable draft of the Parliament Bill. In substance it was the same as the resolutions. But this alone would not have satisfied Grey and the other advocates of reform, nor would it have left others like Asquith himself and Mr. Churchill, who were very willing to put the veto first but who none the less believed that reform was desirable and should not be lost sight of, entirely happy. The difficulty was solved by a preamble, which was an expression of the wishes of the Government, but which would, of course, if and when the bill passed into law, have no legal force.

‘Whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of
Lords as it at present exists,' it ran, ‘a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such a substitution cannot immediately be brought into operation: And whereas provision will require hereafter to be made by Parliament in a measure effecting such substitution for limiting and defining the powers of the new Second Chamber, but it is expedient to make such provision as in this Act appears for restricting the existing powers of the House of Lords.'

The suggestion that a reconstituted Upper House might be invested with greater powers than those which the bill would leave the House of Lords was a little sinister, but it was all so vague as not to cause great radical agitation.

In this form the bill was sent out to the King, who was at Biarritz. He acknowledged it in his own not over-literate hand. His letter, dated April 19, read as follows: ‘The King has received from the Prime Minister the draft of a Bill to make provision with respect to the powers of the House of Lords in relation to those of the House of Commons and to limit the duration of Parliament. The King notices that the date of this Bill is the first of this month.'
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The Government had at last made their intentions clear and thrown a difficult ball to the House of Lords. But when Parliament rose for a short spring recess on April 28, great difficulties still lay ahead for Asquith and his colleagues. Their trump card was the exercise of the prerogative, but this involved the King as well as themselves, and there was no doubt that he was distrustful of the whole constitutional policy of the Government and would approach such action with great distaste.

In 1907, as was described in chapter 111, Lord Newton's House of Lords Reform Bill was given modified support by the Unionist leaders and rendered temporarily innocuous by reference to a Select Committee. This committee deliberated for a year. Despite its strength—it had Rosebery as chairman, the Archbishop of Canterbury and an ex-Speaker
¹
among its independent members, and Lansdowne, Curzon, St. Aldwyn, and Midleton
²
from the Opposition benches—it was not an entirely satisfactory body. Newton has made it clear how difficult it was to work with Rosebery.

‘It must be admitted, however,' he wrote, ‘that Lord Rosebery was less successful as a chairman than might have been anticipated, for he allowed the members to stray from the point under discussion, frequently made discursive if entertaining speeches himself, and conveyed the impression that he was physically unequal to the moderate strain of work involved. He was also liable to fits of discouragement.…'
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Despite these handicaps, the committee eventually produced
an agreed report. This adopted most of the proposals of the bill of 1907, notably those limiting and reducing the hereditary qualification. But it created little stir, and was not even debated in the House of Lords. Leisurely unconcern was the attitude of most of the Unionist peers. The result of the first 1910 election drastically changed this atmosphere. In the first place it made a Liberal attack upon either the powers or the composition of the House of Lords inevitable. In the second place it revealed the not very surprising fact that in the constituencies, and particularly in Scotland and the North of England, the hereditary principle, so far from being treated with reverence, was decidedly unpopular. Already by January 3, Lansdowne was writing to Balfour saying that he had ‘received several letters pressing us for a strong declaration as to House of Lords reform', but adding that, in his view, ‘we ought not to allow ourselves to be rushed by Sir Reginald MacLeod
¹
or anyone else'.
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Balfour was never inclined to rush anyone, and certainly not Lord Lansdowne on this occasion. Even when he had received word, in the interval between the end of the election and the beginning of the session, that proposals for reform might strengthen the hand of the King and of the ‘moderates in the Cabinet', he remained unenthusiastic.

‘The only objections that I can see to this course,' he wrote to Lansdowne on January 29, ‘are (1) that it a little savours of panic, and (2) that we may not find it easy to agree upon a scheme of reform which would be agreeable to the House of Lords, which would meet the views of the Unionist doctrinaires in the constituencies, and which would be workable. Still if the announcement that you mean to try your hand at the problem would
strengthen the hands of the King and of the moderates within the Cabinet in resisting unconstitutional pressure by the extremists, I see no reason why it should not be made.…'
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Lansdowne himself was, if anything, still less enthusiastic, both because of his own predilections, and because, as leader of all the Unionist peers, he could hardly fail to be cautious of a scheme which, whatever its details, would inevitably deprive a substantial number of his followers of their right to sit and vote. Nevertheless in his speech in the debate on the Address he not only indicated his willingness to consider proposals for reform but went further, saying that if the Government refused its co-operation, the peers would bring forward proposals of their own.

This was an invitation which Rosebery, who was indefatigable in taking a series of first steps towards reform, if in nothing else, was eager to accept. He quickly announced that he would move a resolution that the House of Lords should go into committee on the question of its own reform, and that if this were carried he would follow it up with three substantive resolutions in the following form: