Mr Balfour's Poodle(2)

The Cabinet certainly had no excessive radical bias. Campbell-Bannerman, like Gladstone, had moved to the left as he had grown older but, the more so perhaps because he had a possibly difficult election to face, he had not allowed his personal predilections unduly to influence his choice of a Government. Sir Robert Reid,1 who, as Lord Loreburn, went to the Woolsack, and Sinclair,2 the new Secretary of State for Scotland, closely represented his own point of view. Ripon,3 Morley, Herbert Gladstone,4 and Bryce all represented the Gladstonian tradition, which, in so far as it associated them with Home Rule, was thought to make them left-wingers. And there was Lloyd George, together with, as it transpired, that pillar of conservatism, John Burns.5 On the other hand there was the triumvirate of Asquith, Haldane and Grey, two of whom were placed in dominating positions, old Sir Henry Fowler,6 and a number of essentially ‘moderate’ men like Crewe,1 Tweedmouth,2 Elgin (whose moderation, as we have seen, was beyond reproach), and Carrington.3 Compared with its Conservative predecessor, the new Cabinet was of course inexperienced, but a party cannot reasonably hold power for seventeen out of twenty years and then attack its rival for the gross fault of appointing men unversed in the ways of office.

The election campaign itself did not begin until after Christmas, but the overture was given at the Albert Hall on December 21, when Campbell-Bannerman deployed his party’s line of argument. The main stress was on free trade, but there was a. careful reference to Ireland—‘those domestic questions which concern the Irish people only and not ourselves should, as and when opportunity offers, be left in their hands’—some strong but vague phrases about the land, which was to be ‘less of a pleasure-ground for the rich and more of a treasure-house for the nation’, an announcement that instructions had already been given to stop the importation of Chinese coolies into South Africa, a promise to deal with trade union   law, and suggestions of reform of the poor law and of the rating system, and of measures to deal with unemployment. There were varied reactions to the speech, from Liberal enthusiasm to the distaste of the City, which summed up the programme, ‘in its practical way’, as The Times said, ‘as robbery of everyone who has anything to be robbed of’.e

Early in the New Year the election addresses were appearing. Balfour told the electors of East Manchester that ‘there are many things still obscure in the long catalogue of revolutionary changes advocated by new Ministers, but some things are plain enough—Home Rule, disestablishment, the destruction of voluntary schools, and the spoliation of the licence-holder have lost none of their ancient charm in the eyes of Radical law-makers’. He then spoke oracularly of tariff reform, dealt patronisingly with the Government’s foreign policy, regarding it as a weak imitation of his own, and ended with a few gibes on the subject of Cabinet splits. Joseph Chamberlain, in his appeal to the electors of West Birmingham, described the new Administration as ‘essentially a Home Rule and Little Englander Government’. He then turned to a forthright statement of the case for tariff reform, and devoted the remainder of his address to this.

Asquith, in East Fife, wrote an address almost exactly complementary to that of Chamberlain. He berated the late Government for incompetence and then passed to a close-knit argument of the case against tariff reform. He concluded with a reference to ‘the measures of social and domestic reform’ which ought to occupy the new Parliament, and his attitude to which he promised to develop elsewhere during the campaign. Sir Edward Grey, in Berwick-on-Tweed, was more specific. He opened with a statement of his belief in the virtues of free trade, but devoted much less space to the issue than did Asquith. Next came a reference to Chinese labour in South Africa—rather surprisingly from the least partisan of the new Government’s principal Ministers—and then a promise of Irish reform accompanied by a specific statement that no measure such as those attempted in 1886 or 1893 would be introduced without another appeal to the electorate.

The Prime Minister, at Stirling, after a passing reference to the Chinese labour issue, attacked the late Government for its partisan legislation, designed to propitiate those interests which supported it rather than to benefit the country, for its refusal to deal seriously with the social problem, and for its gross extravagance. This last point, on which he laid great stress, is a strong reminder of how different, on budgetary matters, was the old Gladstonian radical tradition, which Campbell-Bannerman represented, from the new one which Lloyd George was soon to develop. He then turned to what he called the positive side of his case, by far the greater part of which was occupied by a long restatement of the argument for free trade. His conclusion was more general, and suggested, although it did not specify, a heavy programme of legislative measures: ‘Should we be confirmed in office it will be our duty, whilst holding fast to the time-honoured principles of Liberalism—the principles of peace, economy, self-government, and civil and religious liberty—and whilst resisting with all our strength the attack upon free trade, to repair so far as lies in our power the mischief wrought in recent years, and, by a course of strenuous legislation and administration, to secure those social and economic reforms which have been too long delayed.’