Mr Balfour's Poodle (22 page)

The other main provisions of the bill limited the right of creation of new hereditary peerages (except for those conferred upon past or present holders of Cabinet office) to a
maximum of five a year, and freed hereditary peers who did not become Lords of Parliament from their ineligibility for membership of the House of Commons.

Perhaps the most interesting comment on the bill was supplied by Lansdowne himself in his speech of introduction. He calculated that under the conditions then existing (i.e. a Government majority of 126 in the Commons) the new House would have a Unionist majority of eighteen, ‘which', he added complacently, ‘was not too large for purposes of revision and delay'.
ⁱ
Furthermore, it should be noted, the initial bias of the new chamber against a Liberal Government would be less than that which might be expected to develop in the future. The Unionist majority of eighteen would be produced despite the fact that the Lords of Parliament nominated by the Government and chosen by the electoral colleges would, to begin with, all reflect the existing balance of parties in the Commons. At subsequent periods of radical Government substantial proportions of the representatives of these two categories would not reflect the then existing balance of parties, but would be a ‘hangover' from the balance of parties, probably less favourable to the left, which had existed three or six or nine years before. With a similar Liberal majority in the Commons, a Unionist majority in the reconstituted Upper House of substantially more than eighteen was therefore likely in the future.

Despite the fact that no real sacrifice of power by the Unionist Party was therefore envisaged, the bill was not greeted with acclaim by many of its members. ‘These proposals,' Lord Newton has written, ‘which really amounted almost to a sentence of death upon the most ancient Legislative Chamber in the world, were received by a crowded and attentive House in a dignified if frigid silence, and the pallid
and wasted appearance of the speaker, who had but lately recovered from a severe illness, seemed to accentuate the general gloom,'
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The
Morning Post
took up an attitude of clear-cut hostility. But neither this lead nor widespread grumbling amongst what were coming to be called the ‘backwoods' peers produced any revolt which was both widespread and determined. Lansdowne was able to proceed to a second reading a week later. On this occasion a number of Unionist peers, including the Dukes of Somerset and Marlborough and Lords Bathurst, Willoughby de Broke, Raglan, Saltoun, and Killanin opposed the bill in their speeches, but, except for Bathurst, did not continue their opposition when the question was put; and even he did not persist to the extent of causing a division to be called. Haldane was able fairly to sum up the tone of the debate as ‘sombre acquiescence punctuated every now and then by cries of pain'.
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The tension had been taken out of the debate by an earlier Government speaker. Morley had declared on the first day that the Parliament Bill would apply to a reformed House of Lords as to the existing one, and that declaration made Lansdowne's manoeuvre purposeless. There was no point in trimming the privileges of the hereditary peers if a less emasculated Second Chamber was not to be the result. When, therefore, the second reading was secured—with Government supporters proclaiming their indifference by walking out of the House—it was the end of the road. Nothing further was heard of the bill.

During the spring the Parliament Bill had completed its progress through the Commons. It had been a keenly contested progress, with more than 900 amendments tabled. Seventy of them were in the names of Government backbenchers,
and the remainder from the Opposition. After a number of late sittings and a free use of the ‘kangaroo closure', the committee stage was disposed of in ten days. The Government made a few minor concessions, accepting amongst others amendments to exclude all private bills from the category of money bills and to postpone the start of the two-year period necessary before a measure could pass over the veto of the Lords from the date of the introduction of the bill to the date of second reading; but the great majority of amendments were resisted and the bill retained substantially its original form. Government majorities were adequate throughout, although Sir Henry Dalziel led 137 dissidents into the lobby in favour of reducing the period of delay from three sessions to two, and the Labour Party voted against the preamble on the ground that abolition or a further curtailment of powers was preferable to reform.

The Unionist amendments mostly followed well-worn lines of argument, although some of them showed a startling willingness to embrace any constitutional novelty which would serve the interests of the party. Sir Frederick Banbury
¹
proposed that the Royal Assent should no longer be automatically given upon the advice of the Government, but that the whole Privy Council should be empowered to advise the Crown on such matters; and J. F. Hope
²
wished a special tribunal, composed of judges and former colonial Governors, to be interposed between the King and his Ministers for this purpose. Sir Alfred Cripps
³
proposed that only measures
passed by both Houses should be referred to as Acts of Parliament and that those passing under the new procedure should be given some different, inferior title. Arthur Griffith-Boscawen
¹
and Lord Hugh Cecil wished the House ot Commons to introduce secret voting on the third reading ot money bills in order to safeguard members against what they regarded as the illicit pressure of the party caucus. It was not very clear whether he regarded this pressure as equally undesirable on both sides, and whether Arthur Balfour felt himself to some extent under fire. In any event, although Balfour had supported the other innovations, he found this one a little too novel for his taste and left its support in the lobby to an unofficial band of Unionists.

Proceedings on the report stage were governed by a timetable resolution which limited the number of days available to three. The course taken by the debates on these days made it seem unlikely that many undeployed arguments were cut out by the restriction.

Third reading, limited to one day, took place on May 15. F. E. Smith moved the rejection, and Asquith made the early speech for the Government. He replied to the suggestion that a constitutional revolution was being forced through against the will of the people by remarking that ‘I am unable to discover a murmur of protest or tittle of remonstrance, though I am made conscious occasionally of a yawn of weariness over the unduly prolonged discussion.…'
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Mr. Churchill wound
up for the Government and was in an aggressively radical, post-Tonypandy mood. He pronounced himself ‘almost aghast at the Government's moderation. The powers left to the House of Lords,' he thought, ‘would be formidable and even menacing.… The Bill made a moderate but definite advance towards political equality. It was territory conquered by the masses from the classes; and when they had placed it on the statute book, without condition or alteration, it would be time to discuss the further steps to be taken.'
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Fortified by this somewhat truculent benediction, the bill completed its passage through the Commons with a vote of 362 to 241 and passed on to the less friendly atmosphere of the House of Lords.

There it came up for second reading on May 23. Midleton, speaking for the Unionist Front Bench, indicated on the first day that the intention was to allow it through at that stage but to propose sweeping amendments in committee. Thereafter the three-day debate followed a familiar course, with the regular speakers making the regular points. Public attention was elsewhere. In so far as it was directed towards any political issues, it was temporarily upon the National Insurance Bill, which Lloyd George had just launched, and the Trade Union Bill,
¹
designed partly to undo the effect of the Osborne judgment. But to an increasing extent the Coronation and associated festivities were thrusting all party political questions into the background. It was a summer of great heat and of fevered and lavish gaiety. And despite the intense
personal animosities which the constitutional struggle had provoked, the great social gatherings were still able to bring together the leading contestants in a way that, a year or two later, the bitterness of the Ulster quarrel made impossible. One of the most flamboyant of these gatherings was the fancy dress ball which Lord Winterton and F. E. Smith gave at Claridge's on May 24. Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour were both present, but in costumes no more exciting than ordinary evening dress. Mr. Churchill was also disapppointingly conservative, with a red Venetian cloak and a domino his only concessions to the occasion. The Speaker of the House of Commons, however, in full Arab regalia, showed that high political rank was no bar to full participation in the evening. Mr. Waldorf Astor,
¹
then a Unionist Member of Parliament, attracted the most notice by appearing in a peer's robes of state and bearing above his coronet a placard with the figures ‘499' on one side and the legend ‘still one more vacancy' on the other. A political joke was still possible in mixed political company. A few mornings later, however, the levity of this evoked a vigorous letter of protest to
The Times,
appearing under the signature of ‘A Peer'.

The Coronation itself took place on June 22. It was a cool and showery day in the midst of a blazing summer, and perhaps for this reason the crowds were not so large as had been anticipated. It was the last great gathering in London of the representatives of monarchical Europe, but this was not to be known either by those who came to watch or by those who stayed away. Indeed, contemporary reports that, as the procession passed, the most cordial welcomes were given to the representatives of Germany, the United
States, and France
ⁿ
showed that the shadow of future events was not interfering with the catholicity of the British public.

The only echo of the bitter political struggle came from the stands reserved for members of Parliament and their families and friends. From these the Chancellor of the Exchequer received a somewhat mixed reception as he made his way to the Abbey. But for those who were not more interested in the Clapham Common murder and other sensations of the day the political issues were never far below the surface. As if to act as a reminder of the comparative turbulence of the times a widespread seamen's strike persisted throughout the festivities; and the politicians were all busy calculating the best positions from which they could resume the constitutional battle. The Opposition hoped that the period of national rejoicing might have created a new atmosphere and a new set of circumstances in which they could ignore the verdict of the previous December. Even so neutrally conformist a source as the
Annual Register
commented: ‘It may be that the keener Unionist politicians expected the sentiments roused by the Coronation ceremonies to tell in their favour with the electorate.'
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But their hopes in this respect were doomed to disappointment. Neither the bye-elections which had taken place earlier in the year nor those which followed in July (the combination of the Coronation honours and of a number of unseatings on petition
¹
produced quite a spate)
showed any trend against the Government. When the battle was rejoined, it was an early conclusion, and not the opening of a new phase upon new ground, which was to follow.

Amendments to the Parliament Bill were placed upon the paper of the House of Lords on June 26, and the committee stage began on June 28. It took the form of a six-day massacre of the Government's proposals and the virtual substitution of the scheme which the Unionist leaders had unsuccessfully urged upon the constitutional conference. A joint committee of both Houses and not the Speaker alone was to determine what was and what was not a money bill, and this committee was to be given the instruction of a further amendment which very narrowly defined such bills. Clause Two, dealing with general legislation, was altered so that any measure which
(a)
affected the existence of the Monarchy or the Protestant Succession,
(b)
established a National Parliament or Council in any of the three kingdoms, or
(c)
was considered by the joint committee to raise an issue of great gravity upon which the opinion of the country had not been fully ascertained, fell outside its scope. Such measures were to be submitted to a referendum. This amendment was described by Morley as ‘tearing up the bill'.

Despite this and despite the complaint of one Unionist peer, Montagu of Beaulieu, that another amendment was ‘contrary to the spirit in which a second reading had been given to the bill', the Opposition suffered from no lack of
support in the division lobby. Cromer's amendment to substitute the joint committee for the Speaker was carried by 183 to 44 and Lansdowne's amendment to introduce the referendum by 253 to 40. On the latter occasion no less than twenty-seven of the peers voting in the minority were Campbell-Bannerman or Asquith creations—a different situation from that which had prevailed at the time of the great Reform Bill, when the holders of the older peerages had been somewhat more liberal than the new creations. Indeed Lansdowne's difficulties were with his more extreme and not with his more moderate followers. Lord Willoughby de Broke, a young peer who had come into sudden prominence as an organiser of the die-hards, moved and carried to a division an amendment to make a general election
and
a referendum necessary in the case of all measures which came under Clause Two of the bill. Eighteen peers voted with him, but the Opposition leaders, finding this proposal rather strong meat even for their stomachs, went into the other lobby and helped to produce a majority vote of ninety. This division, it was suggested, showed the lines of the coming Unionist split. This is not entirely true, for although those who voted for the amendment were all for resistance
à outrance,
others who subsequently joined and even led them in this defiance were nearer to Lansdowne's point of view at this stage. Thus Lord Willoughby also expressed grave misgivings about Lansdowne's official ‘referendum' amendment, but Lord Salisbury, who was later to add the weight of the whole Cecil faction to the die-hards, spoke strongly in its favour.
¹