Mr Balfour's Poodle(22)

The House returned to the Finance Bill on Monday, August 9, and devoted the whole of that week to it. There were two all-night sittings and instead of the normal short day on the Friday the House sat until dinner time. On the following Tuesday there was another all-night sitting,1 and this, together with a day lasting only until midnight on the Wednesday, brought another stage in the battle to an end. By this time Clause 27 had been reached, and the first part of the bill, dealing with the land taxes, was almost completed.

For the next fortnight the House was occupied with the Irish Land Bill and the Housing Bill. The former, particularly, was moderately controversial,1 but as it guaranteed the presence and support of the Nationalists, the time devoted to it enabled many Liberals to take a short holiday. Progress on the Finance Bill was resumed on Wednesday, September 1. Thereafter, until the end of the committee stage more than a month later, only five parliamentary days were not devoted to it, and for the last three weeks, from September 20, it occupied the whole of the time. During this last lap (from September 1) the House did not sit quite so extravagantly late as it had been doing. There were no sittings that lasted until breakfast time; but there were four that lasted until after 3.0am and another five which lasted until 2.0am or later; and on only one occasion, except on Fridays (and there was a sitting until dinner time on one of these), was the business concluded before midnight.

The committee stage was finally concluded on Wednesday, October 6—the forty-second allotted day—and on the Friday the House adjourned for a week. After the reassembly, nine days, without late sittings, were devoted to report, and this stage of the bill was obtained on Friday, October 29. There remained only third reading, and this, after three days of debate, was carried by 379 votes to 149, at 11.30pm on Thursday, November 4. The bill was sent to the Lords, and the Commons went away for nearly three weeks.

In all, it had taken seventy parliamentary days to get the Budget through the House of Commons, and there had been 554 divisions—in the whole session there were no less than 895, as against a mere 383 in a very busy modern year like 1946-47. The strain on the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been immense, although he had received more help from his colleagues than would be normal today. Apart from his assistant at the Treasury1 and the Solicitor-General, the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for War, the President of the Board of Trade, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Attorney-General and a number of junior Ministers all assisted him at the despatch-box. Haldane led for the Government throughout almost the whole of one all-night sitting, and Asquith on a number of occasions came down to the House after a short night and an early breakfast at Downing Street, and took over for the last hour or two of a long sitting. At more attractive times of day relief was still easier to obtain. Nevertheless, the brunt of the burden inevitably remained on the Chancellor’s own shoulders. Some rough guide to the regularity of his attendance is given by the fact that he voted in 462 of the 554 divisions.2 But his demeanour was more important than his presence, and there seems to be general agreement that at all stages of this arduous process his behaviour in the House was courteous, skilled and, where no point of principle was involved, conciliatory. It was a most distinguished parliamentary performance.

The strain of the summer on the Liberal back-benchers, while obviously not so great as on the leaders, was also considerable; and they did not have the glory to compensate. Voting without speaking is always a dismal business. Fortunately the majority was such that a very rigorous system of whipping was not necessary. In none of the 554 divisions was there even the threat of a Government defeat. As a result, the Patronage Secretary was able to spread the burden fairly thin. There was not much indication, even during August, that many Liberal members were abroad or in the country, for the numbers voting early in the day were often surprisingly high —250-300 was quite common. But late at night only the minimum number was kept on duty. After about 2.0am the Opposition vote normally fell to between forty and sixty, and the Government obviously made little attempt to keep more than its ‘closure vote’1 and a margin of perhaps 15 to 20. In this way the strain of the session was made tolerable.

Sustained and severe though the struggle was in the House of Commons, it was little less so in the country; and here the issue was more open to doubt. At first the Budget did not appear to be popular. This impression came partly from a chance Liberal defeat at the Stratford-on-Avon bye-election which followed a few days after its introduction; partly from the greater speed with which the union  ist leaders took to the platforms; and partly from the fact that the City shouted so loudly that it seemed at first that there must be many others helping the financiers to make the noise. This campaign in the City reached its crescendo on June 23, when a crowded meeting of influential businessmen, under the chairmanship of Lord Rothschild, met in the Cannon Street Hotel. Many of those present were normally supporters of the Liberal Party, and this, together with the fact that Lord Rosebery had used the previous day’s issue of The Times to publish his first denunciation of the Budget, made some Liberals a little nervous of developments in their own party.