19
Consequence
I am not quite yet sure that this is not preferable to Westminster.Consequence
Colin Ryan, May 22nd, 1913
Before the war, the dividing line of British politics was the fledgling Imperial Federation. Whether one believed in it or not had been the question sorting Liberals and Conservatives, with the debate over the status of Ireland in the Federation and United Kingdom restoring the parliamentary power of the Irish Nationalist Party, which had been near-defunct before the General Election of 1905. While the Election of 1910 had decided the matter of its existence, much of the detail had been left for a later date.
The Act of Union 1910, while ostensibly giving Westminster wide-ranging powers to legislate for the whole Federation, had never been tested. While it would perhaps seem that the natural division over this question would mirror that of the division on the Federation’s existence, with Liberals arguing for federal power and Conservatives against it. Instead, the debate over compulsion would tear open rifts within the major parties as it brought into sharp focus the question of what, ultimately, was the end-goal of Federation.
If the question had been raised by another issue, such as one focussed on Ireland alone or perhaps the Colour Bar in South Africa, the parties might have been able to maintain the broad strokes of their coalitions. The former would have kept the Conservatives intact through their desire to bring Ireland back into the fold of the Union Proper. The latter would have offered the Liberals a clear moral case with which to intervene in a Commonwealth, one based on the Suffrage question that had been the party’s most unifying policy goal from its Whig antecedent to the final triumph of Women’s Suffrage in 1892.
Instead, compulsion drove a wedge through the coalition of the most ideologically principled liberals and more utilitarian liberals that had already been tested by Sinclairism, and only barely kept together by the belief of both in Federation. On Federation, it exposed the divide between those who had seen it as a way to manage divergence and those who had seen it as a way to knit the Empire closer together. This was only exacerbated by the fact that the Federation was not only a Liberal achievement, but its prime architect, H. H. Asquith, was still on their backbenches.
For the Conservatives, it exposed similar rifts between the economically liberal faction that had been too opposed to Sinclairism to remain with the Liberals, and the older, more paternalistic strain of Conservative thought. On Federation, the split was almost three ways, between those who had not yet been reconciled to it, those who had come to see it as a way to keep the Empire unified, and those who had become convinced it was better to cut loose the Commonwealths than let the Federation undermine the unitary nature of the United Kingdom further [1].
For the INP, it would prove a death sentence, as the consensus between moderates and hardliners – previously sustained by the need to achieve Commonwealth Status – broke down over economic issues, social issues, and the ultimate purpose of the Quest for Commonwealth. It was something of a miniature version of the wider rifts in British politics. By the end of the war, Irish politics, though it had always had more layers of complexity than that of Great Britain, would be riven with so many criss-crossing fault lines that A. R. Foulkes, one of the great historians of modern British politics once said ‘[he could] understand British politics after the Great War, or Irish politics, but not both’.
The Palace of Westminster, Summer 1912
As for why compulsion became the word of the day in Westminster in the autumn of 1912, that was the result of the Second Battle of the Salients. The failure of the offensive brought home two inescapable dilemmas. The first was that manpower could not be maintained through volunteers alone if the war was going to exert anything like the butcher’s bill of the Salients on a regular basis. The second was that, after three months of fighting on a small part of it, the entirety of the front was in danger of collapse if there was a general German offensive, and that was because British industry, through regular market forces, could not match the Army’s need for munitions and materiel.
As the scale of the disaster in France became clear, it also became clear that there would have to be consequences beyond a removal of Hamilton from command. As one of the main advocates and the man in command of the attack, he was a scalp that could calm the nerves of the establishment in the case of a regular military mistake. This, however, was something that seemed to demand a review of the entire command in France.
That it would result in such a review is likely why someone leaked information about the munitions crisis to the press. The leak was first published in The Times on 12 October, as demands were mounting for a full-scale reorganisation of the BEF’s General Staff. To this day, it is not entirely clear where the leak came from. Wavell-Pierce has been suggested, and he would certainly have had motive. In his memoirs, he even admitted said motive; as C-in-C, he would have been the logical choice to sack. However, within that same passage, he defends himself against the accusation, pointing out that the calls for his resignation began weeks before the leak, whilst the leak only happened when those calls expanded to the wider command. Whomever it was, their action sparked a full-scale political crisis.
The munitions crisis implicated Whitehall, placing the blame for failure at least partially on the system more widely. The Army had not failed. They had been let down by ministers and civil servants. This, in turn, caused a rift within the government as they tried to remedy the problem. Initially, it was an internal battle for Lloyd-George, whose own opposition to compulsion was now face-to-face with the fact that his time as Prime Minister would likely be at an end if he did not adopt it in, at the least, the industrial sphere. The decision was forced on him by a speech from Alexander Courtenay in the House on 21 October, in which the leader of the Conservatives implied that, should a bill not be brought forth to ensure the sufficient production of war goods, his party would be forced to call for a Vote of No Confidence:
English liberty is indeed sacred, but if this government is willing to risk its existence, willing to risk it be crushed under a German boot forever, over opposition to a temporary curtailment, a curtailment necessary for the long-term security that guards English liberty, then I cannot see how it should enjoy the confidence of this House.
The Prime Minister therefore called Cabinet on 23 October, and informed them that a Compulsion Bill would have to be drawn up. The exact details would have to be hashed out by the Board of Trade, the Treasury, and the War Departments, but there was no question that the market solution had come to the end of its lifespan. Simon, having killed the War Industry Bill less than nine months earlier, was horrified, along with much of the Cabinet. It was the stuff of Labour’s left wing, not Sinclairism. The other factor that split the Cabinet that day was the scope of the bill; the powers given to the body resulting from it would extend to the Commonwealths.
(L-R) Seely, Churchill, and Attorney General Ebbets on the day the government collapsed
The next three weeks in Westminster were some of the most dramatic in its entire history. Simon threatened to resign if the Treasury and War Departments sent him so much as a draft of a new War Industry Bill. Knowing that the political situation likely demanded a ritual sacrifice of a Cabinet member, Lloyd George took the opportunity to sack him. With him went many of the lesser members of Cabinet and numerous junior ministers.
On 27 October, Simon stood up in the House of Commons, and delivered a blistering speech in opposition to compulsion, marking himself out as leader of the principled anti-compulsion liberals in the party. Three days later, the new War Industries Bill was published, along with its Commonwealth Clause. Though he had heard rumours of this, the confirmation of its existence brought Asquith out of the semi-retirement he had been enjoying for some two years. For Asquith, the Federation had come out of the tension between the divergence of Canada and the forcibly holding close of Ireland in the 1860s. His vision was very much that of a Federation to manage the differing demands of a far-flung Empire, rather than one to harness its power centrally. Late on Friday, 30 October, he met with Simon to discuss their opposition to the WIB.
If it had been the Liberal Party alone in turmoil over the WIB, then the story of 2 November might have simply been of that party’s internal contradictions letting the Conservatives march into government on a promise to prosecute the war with all the vigour required. However, Courtenay’s own stand had underestimated the extent to which his own party would be divided over the actual substance of the WIB’s compulsion measures and the Commonwealth Clause. The opposition to Courtenay was led by the pair of Frederic Graves (a Canadian who had joined the Conservatives because he disagreed with Canadian Accession, and wished to reverse it) and Sir James Hambro (a member of the Hambro banking family who, for somewhat obvious reasons, despised the idea of industrial compulsion).
On Tuesday, 3 November, the WIB was brought forth for its Second Reading. Though it made it to Committee Stage by a healthy margin of 455-280, the total disintegration of party unity in the vote marked the fall of Lloyd George’s first ministry. Asquith and Simon, and Graves and Hambro, had both managed to take about a third of their parties’ parliamentary representation with them into the No Lobby. Of 330 Liberals, 124 had voted against. Of 328 Conservatives, 109 had done so. Even more spectacular was the INP, where 41 out of 68 MPs had voted against [2]. The last was a particular blow for Colin Ryan, who had tentatively fallen on the side of the Bill as a necessity for the war effort, even if he hoped to kill the Commonwealth Clause in Committee or Report.
The PM, famous for his ability to gauge the political wind, almost certainly knew this was the effect the WIB would have on his own party, even if he did not – apparently – expect the other two to have a similar collapse. The reason he went ahead nonetheless is found in the swiftness of his manoeuvres post-vote. Even as they were passing through the Aye Lobby, Lloyd George had given a tap on Courtenay’s shoulder and indicated that the two should ‘have a talk once [they were] done here’.
(L-R) Austen Chamberlain, Alexander Courtenay, and Winston Churchill, 7 November 1912
Over the course of the next three days, Courtenay and Lloyd George, together with what was left of their front benches, negotiated a coalition agreement. It would be built on prosecuting the war to the end, by any means necessary. This included a cast-iron commitment to the WIB, and, at the insistence of Churchill and Seely, a secret clause indicating that the principals would accept conscription if the military situation made it necessary [3]. Built on such an agreement on the major issues, and with a majority of 425-310 – even without accounting for the fact that the ostensible opposition included the 27 sympathetic INP members and Labour’s delegation [4] – the second Lloyd George Ministry was on much more secure footing than the legacy government of the 1910 Election he had led up till now.
Though Number 10, the Foreign Office, and the War Departments remained in Liberal hands, the Conservatives got the Treasury and the Home Office in the deal. Most importantly, by staking Number 11 for himself, Courtenay had cemented his position as unofficial Deputy Prime Minister. The Board of Trade itself would be so fundamentally transformed by the WIB’s eventual passage that its ministerial composition was left to a later date. Other posts were filled slowly over the course of the next month, as the business of war began to regain some of its old rhythm.
In the weeks between 23 October and 7 November, the entire world had held its breath. The primary member of the Entente seemed to be on the brink of a total political collapse. In fact, for three days, it had experienced such a collapse. Not only that, but the United States had held its Presidential Election on 5 November. On that date, the only democratic member of the Western Entente with a government was France, part-occupied and in a state of total panic, as the possibility of both its most important allies dropping out due to internal politics reared its head. The depth of that panic was only matched by the temporary, exhilarating sense of hope experienced by Berlin, Rome, and Madrid.
However, on the morning of 6 November, it became clear that Roosevelt had been re-elected in a landslide, a pro-War Congress forming on his coattails. Then Lloyd George and Alexander Courtenay emerged from Number 10 on the morning of 7 November, flanked by the Foreign Secretary and War Ministers. The Entente’s three-day political crisis had thus concluded with the governments of the United States and United Kingdom more determined to, and more politically capable of, fighting the war to the bitter end.
[1] – This last faction even had a split within itself, on whether Ireland should be cut loose too or reintegrated.
[2] – The result is rounded out by the 3 Labour MPs voting for the WIB and all 6 minor regional MPs voting against.
[3] – Courtenay and Lloyd George, who both would end up agonising over the decision when it did come, clearly did not appreciate just how likely it was that conscription would be deemed necessary. On the part of the Prime Minister, this seems to have been a disbelief in what he saw as overly pessimistic Army estimates. Courtenay, at least, had the excuse of not being briefed yet in full by the War Departments when the coalition was being agreed.
[4] – Until 7 November, Colin Ryan had remained as leader of the INP. The combination of the coalition not needing the INP, and his determining that the party itself could no longer abide by him as leader, led to his resignation once the government was in place. Sick of Westminster, and feeling his part there had, at least for now, been played, he joined the Army on 16 November.
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