The publication of various sociological studies into poverty showed that it could no longer be blamed on the immorality of the poor. It was seen instead as a consequence of social and economic circumstances beyond their control. The radical Edwardian intelligentsia established poverty as a fact that had to be acknowledged by the government and addressed by the state. After their interventions, few people believed that poverty could be eradicated through the efforts of individuals, municipal boards and voluntary organizations. Even The Times now spoke of the inevitability of increased reform and a degree of wealth redistribution managed by government. Many people looked to the new Liberal administration to reduce poverty, and to implement an ambitious programme of domestic legislation. But were the Liberals up to the task? After all, Victorian Liberalism had been built on a creed of noninterference.
To judge by the Liberals’ election campaign, the party was neither capable of, nor interested in, introducing extensive legislation. The Liberal leader – the portly, canny and likeable Scot Campbell-Bannerman (or C-B as he preferred to be known) – had based the campaign on the traditional Gladstonian platform of ‘peace, retrenchment and reform’. Rather than outlining an innovative and detailed programme, most Liberal electioneering had concentrated on criticizing Balfour’s government. That had also been C-B’s strong suit during his seven years as opposition leader. When he faced the subtle and patrician Balfour across the dispatch box in the Commons, it seemed, as one journalist put it, as if ‘a stout, amiable City man’ had been ‘called upon to face, with nothing better than a walking stick, a lithe fencer with a nimble rapier’. C-B was often effective and invariably imperturbable, which irritated Balfour enormously.
C-B had employed negative electioneering tactics out of necessity as well as choice. He led a fractious and disunited party, which could only come together in criticism of the opposition. When Balfour forced the Liberals to form a government at the end of 1905, the pro-imperialist faction of the party, which included such prominent MPs as Herbert Henry Asquith and Sir Edward Grey, tried to pack C-B off to the Lords, thereby assuming control in the Commons. C-B punctured the rebellion by offering the rebels key positions in his cabinet, on the condition that they drop their demands. They agreed, and backed his vague and anodyne election programme.
Disunity within the Liberal Party was an expression of the disparate character of the elements that comprised it. Nonconformists featured prominently, as did commercialists and industrialists; yet it also contained aristocratic Whigs, as well as radicals such as John Burns, the son of a washerwoman. The party had traditionally protected the rights of Nonconformists against attacks from the established church; it also defended commerce and industry against the landed interest. It was difficult, however, to formulate a coherent programme that might satisfy all of the factions within the party. Historically, the Liberals had preferred to advocate a series of single ‘causes’, such as Irish Home Rule, yet the danger of this tactic was that it made them seem a party of protest. The bonds linking its disparate elements might also one day be loosened, or some of those elements might switch their allegiance. Joseph Chamberlain’s defection from the Liberal benches to the Tory side of the House suggested that the party ought not, for instance, count on the undying loyalty of self-made Nonconformist businessmen.
At the beginning of 1906, however, Liberal supporters were in confident mood. Their 400 MPs took their places in the new parliament, behind a talented front bench that reflected the broad church of Liberalism. The three former ‘imperialist’ rebels sat alongside radical and Nonconformist MPs, while several cabinet members had titles. In early debates of the parliament, C-B overpowered Balfour: ‘The right honourable gentleman’, he declared, ‘has learned nothing. He comes back to this new Commons with the … same frivolous way of dealing with great questions. He little knows the temper of the new House … Let us get to business.’
‘Business’ included the implementation of social legislation that, while modest in scope and impact, represented a significant improvement on the efforts of Balfour’s administration. Free school meals were provided for every child, should local authorities apply for them; the power and legal status of the unions were reinforced by the Trade Disputes Act (1906); and the 1906 Workmen’s Compensation Act gave compensation to those injured at work. Abroad, C-B’s administration granted self-government to the Boers in the Transvaal Colony, closing an unhappy chapter of English history.
7
The Terrible Twins
On 3 April 1908, C-B stepped down as premier, exhausted by overwork and immobilized by a series of heart attacks. He died a couple of weeks afterwards, still resident in Downing Street. A competent successor was waiting in the wings, in Herbert Henry Asquith. Despite his earlier interest in rebellion, Asquith had been loyal to C-B as chancellor of the Exchequer, while also demonstrating his administrative ability. Asquith’s ‘mind’, Churchill commented, ‘opened and shut smoothly and exactly like the breech of a gun’, a portrait that captured something of Asquith’s nonchalant efficiency. His nonchalance was also suggested by his nickname ‘Squiffy’, which alluded to his habit of drinking heavily, even when there was political business to be conducted. He was in his element at a country house party, where he might enjoy cards and the companionship of attractive young women, or in a London club in the company of aristocrats.
The heart of the English establishment was a curious place to find a man of Asquith’s background. He came from a radical Nonconformist family in Yorkshire that had made its fortune in wool, and had been orphaned at an early age. Yet his difficult and puritanical middle-class upbringing, which instilled in him an unshakeable self-belief, had been complemented by an establishment education in the south of England. He had taken the traditional routes into government, via Oxford and the Inns of Court, acquiring at the first a consciousness of effortless superiority and at the second the ability to destroy the arguments of others. In the late 1880s, while his legal career flourished, Asquith became a Liberal MP and rose effortlessly within the party; in 1892 he served as home secretary under Gladstone.
Though Asquith made memorable speeches from the front bench, it was often difficult to remember the message behind his stylish rhetoric. He rivalled Balfour as a master of the art of elegant equivocation, and nor was obfuscation the only thing the pair had in common. ‘Asquith does not inspire men with great passions,’ one journalist commented, while even Asquith’s wife described him as a ‘cold hard unsympathetic man loved by none’. There was also a Balfourian indolence, dilatoriness and aloofness about the new Liberal prime minister. He rarely came to cabinet meetings fully prepared, but instead considered questions as they were raised. The aristocratic establishment was able to perpetuate itself by absorbing and fashioning members of the new, wealthy and powerful middle class who were willing to conform to its rules. Asquith would renounce his Nonconformism, for example, and convert to the Anglican tradition. He also decided to marry the daughter of a baronet, the eccentric society ‘wit’ Margot Tennant.
Asquith’s establishment views did not equip him to implement extensive and radical social reform, yet they did enable him to conciliate the diverse ideological elements in his party. In his convoluted orations, he struck a fine balance between competing Liberal creeds and factions. He would criticize the ‘misdirected and paralysing activity of the state’ in one breath, but acknowledge the ‘needs and services which could not be safely left to the unregulated forces of supply and demand’ with the next. He presided over the motley characters in his cabinet as a chairman rather than as an autocrat. The Whiggish faction of the party was represented by Reginald McKenna and a large group of earls and lords; the Gladstonian element by John Morley. The radical Liberal wing was pleased that Burns retained his position as president of the Local Government Board, while Nonconformists were delighted that the Welshman David Lloyd George had taken over from Asquith at the Exchequer. The most unexpected decision Asquith made was in appointing the former Tory MP Winston Churchill to the Board of Trade. These last two appointments of men with a passion for social reform and inordinate ambition and energy appeared promising to progressives.