Immediately after the signing of the treaty, the Ulster Unionists opted out of the Free State. The ‘territory’, ‘province’ or ‘region’ of Northern Ireland was thereby established, and the union to which England belonged became ‘The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’. As the civil war raged in the south, the Unionists consolidated their power within Northern Ireland. They shaped electoral constituencies to guarantee clear Protestant majorities, and passed a Special Powers Act that gave the Unionist police the power to search and imprison Catholics without trial. The question of where the boundary would be drawn remained undecided for the duration of the Irish Civil War. After that conflict had ended, the impoverished Irish Free State, now led by De Valera, officially accepted the treaty and renounced its claim to govern the two Catholic-nationalist majority ‘Northern Irish’ counties of Fermanagh and Tyrone. In return the British government cancelled Ireland’s debts to the British Empire. The British Boundary Commission of 1925 would confirm Northern Ireland’s status as a six-county state.
In the long term, the treaty and partition failed to solve England’s ‘Irish question’. Over the succeeding decades, Unionist-dominated Northern Ireland would oppress its Catholic population, creating resentment both north and south of the border. That border would become a focus for attacks by the IRA, whose aim was to end partition and expel British forces from Irish soil. The Irish Free State, meanwhile, would last for a mere fifteen years, after which the Dáil renounced Ireland’s dominion status and proclaimed the sovereignty of ‘Éire’ under a new constitution.
In the days following the 1921 treaty, Lloyd George was praised by his Liberal coalition colleagues for breaking the ten-year stalemate in Ireland, and for ending decades of uncertainty over the country’s constitutional status. Many on the right, meanwhile, looked forward to reaping the benefits of the new electoral dispensation, which ensured that a majority of Unionists would be returned to Westminster from Northern Ireland, while no Liberal-leaning Irish MPs from the south would sit in the Commons. Liberated from Irish issues, many Unionists started referring to themselves again as ‘Conservatives’ or ‘Tories’, and the old name of ‘the Conservative party’ was eventually restored.
Yet not everyone in the Conservative party welcomed the developments in Ireland. Fifty or so ‘die-hard’ Tory Unionists denounced the treaty as a betrayal of the Protestants living in the Irish Free State. They argued that a series of IRA terror attacks in Northern Ireland and London proved that Lloyd George had not settled the ‘Irish question’, openly criticizing the prime minister and attempting to turn their fellow Tories against him. While the majority of Tories continued to support Lloyd George, their enthusiasm for the coalition ebbed; when he started selling countless peerages and knighthoods for his own personal gain, it evaporated. ‘Bronco Bill’ Sutherland, an associate of the prime minister, would trawl London’s clubs and offer plutocrats baronetcies for around £10,000. One hundred and thirty baronetcies were sold in this way, along with 26 peerages and almost 500 knighthoods.
All governments sold honours in this way, and the Tories happily took some of the proceeds. What irritated them was that most of the money went to Lloyd George’s personal fund, since he was a politician without an official party. Besides, offering honours so indiscriminately made a mockery of a system designed to glorify and perpetuate the British ruling class, as well as the British Empire and the monarch who reigned over it. It is hardly surprising that George V accused his prime minister of ‘debasing’ the whole system, a charge that did not trouble the egalitarian Lloyd George. Yet many Conservatives took the king’s view, and began looking among their own ranks for a potential replacement.
There was, however, time for one last adventure. Lloyd George attempted to gain popular backing for British military intervention in support of Greece in its struggle against a resurgent Turkey. The Turks showed no desire to provoke the British forces into war, and the incident served only to emphasize how isolated Britain was and how overstretched its empire had become. Stanley Baldwin, an MP rising rapidly through the Conservative ranks, denounced Lloyd George at a Tory party meeting as a ‘terrible dynamic force’ that might split the Tories. It was time for the Tories to break away from the coalition, form a government and then fight an election under their own leader and on their own platform.
Buoyed by a recent by-election victory and encouraged by continuing division among the Liberals, the majority of Conservative MPs agreed with Baldwin. They had had enough of ‘the Welsh attorney’ ‘dictating’ to their party. Yet Austen Chamberlain, who had recently become party leader when Law had retired owing to ill health, took a different view; a split within the Conservative party seemed possible. After the vote of no confidence in the coalition Chamberlain resigned from the cabinet, followed by Lloyd George. The news of the resignations improved Law’s health significantly, and he took over the leadership of a caretaker Tory government. He would remain in power briefly while parliament was dissolved and a general election called.
When Lloyd George resigned, King George remarked that he would soon be prime minister again. Law and Asquith were too old to lead the country and MacDonald’s opportunity had not yet come, while Churchill belonged to the coalition Liberals who had lost their raison d’être. Yet without a powerful party to support him, there would never be a return to Downing Street for Lloyd George. The Tories thus tethered the Liberal scapegoat, before leading him out into the wilderness.
17
Gay as you like
If events in Ireland suggested the empire was breaking up, strikes across England suggested that society was breaking down. Unrest, discontent and division pervaded the country, while memories of the carnage on the Western Front were still vivid. It is hardly surprising that social and cultural life in the Twenties was characterized by confusion, pessimism and disquietude, yet there were also signs of vitality and exhilaration. Many would describe the decade as a time during which youth rebelled against their elders and attempted to forget the past.
Along with the flappers, the most famous revellers of the period were the bohemian aristocratic sets known as the ‘bright young things’. They largely comprised rich young hooligans from Oxbridge and the older public schools, along with their girlfriends and acquaintances. According to Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, the novel that immortalized them, their chief purpose was to party: ‘masked parties, savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, almost naked parties in St John’s Wood, parties in ships and hotels and night clubs, in windmills and swimming baths’. This last gathering was the famous ‘Bath and Bottle party’ at St George’s swimming baths in London, where flowers and rubber horses floated on water illuminated by coloured spotlights. The guests, dressed in dazzling swimming costumes, drank ‘Bathwater Cocktails’ and danced to the strains of a black jazz orchestra, sometimes hurling themselves into the pool.
At these parties the transgressive infantilism of the set was given full and eccentric expression. The elder brothers, cousins, uncles and fathers of the bright young things had reached adulthood before the war, and many were now maimed, scarred or dead. Why should the young generation follow in footsteps that had led to the mass grave of the Western Front? The defiance of the group was also tinged with guilt at having been too young to die beside their older relatives.
The parties tended to be informal, crammed, wild and noisy. Obscenity and excess were the keynotes, as partygoers enjoyed sex, gin and ‘uppies’ (cocaine). The young hooligans also partied at breakneck speed: ‘they rush from one restaurant and party to another,’ a contemporary noted, ‘to a third and fourth in the course of an evening, and finish up with an early morning bathing party, transported at 60 mph to the swimming baths of Eton, or a race down the Great West Road.’ The young hedonists zigzagged across country roads ‘at high speed, under the influence of drink, in the hope, if there was a smash, that the case would be reported in the Sunday newspapers’.