Mr Balfour's Poodle(31)

Asquith was always at home with this subject, and he responded eagerly to any gauntlets which were flung down before him by the Opposition leaders. ‘After seven years’ controversy,’ he said at Crieff on January 15, ‘the world is strewn with the wreckage of Mr. Chamberlain’s prophecies on Tariff Reform. Our oversea trade has expanded beyond expectation; the census of production has shown that we are more than holding our own, and that the injury of “dumped” goods is imaginary.’h

He was glad to have something into which he could get his teeth, for many of the union  ist pronouncements on other topics (and some on this) presented the controversialist with nothing but a smooth, round surface. ‘We seek to build up; our opponents to destroy,’ wrote Austen Chamberlain, in a mystical mood. ‘We seek to promote union  ; our opponents to promote separation.’i ‘Liberal policy runs counter to the best thought of the time,’j said Arthur Balfour, in one of the most unprecise and arrogant remarks which can ever have come from such normally precise, if not, in big things, over-modest lips.

Polling began on January 15. Both parties were optimistic, as parties must always be, although the calmer spirits in both would probably have admitted that a near balance with the Irish holding control was the most likely result. London and Lancashire were regarded as the key areas, in which sweeping Conservative gains would be registered if the left-wing majority was to be destroyed.

The first results were not discouraging for the union  ists. There were three gains for them in London, three in Lancashire and two in the three-member industrial borough of Wolverhampton; and in Birmingham the safe seats became still safer. But this early promise was not quite fulfilled. By the end of a week, with about three quarters of the results in, a net union  ist gain of seventy-five was shown, and it was certain that neither of the two main parties could secure a clear majority, but that the Government, with its allies, would be fairly comfortably placed.

By the end of the month all the returns, with the usual exceptions of the Scottish Universities and Orkney and Shetland, were complete, and it was possible to see the picture in detail. The union  ists had achieved a net gain (over their 1906 position) of 116 seats, and had brought themselves to within two of the strength of the Liberal Party itself; they were 273 and the Liberals were 275. The Nationalists, in addition to the defection of the ‘independents’, dropped one county division, and the Labour members, despite a gain from the union  ists at Wigan and the spur of the Osborne judgment (which had been given on December 22), sustained a net reduction of eleven, and fell back to forty.

The Government coalition therefore had a nominal majority of 124, which, although very far short of the preponderance of 1906, was nevertheless the next largest majority which a Liberal Government had enjoyed since 1832.1 But it was not a very cohesive majority. To call the Independent Nationalists allies of the Government in any sense was to strain the meaning of language. They certainly could not be counted upon for support. And even the support of Redmond and his followers was highly conditional. But it was quite essential, for, even with the Labour Party solidly in the Government lobby, a temporary alliance of union  ists and Nationalists could defeat Asquith by forty. It was not an easy prospect which faced the Prime Minister.

Where had the losses occurred which made the Liberal strength so much less than in 1906? Not, to any extent, in Wales, Scotland, or Ireland. The Celtic fringe, which in 1906 had given the Government parties 175 seats (out of a possible 235), gave them only four less in 1910. In Scotland there was even a net gain of one, for losses further north were more than balanced by an increase in Liberal strength on the Clyde. In Wales the ‘clean sweep’ of 1906 was not repeated, but there were only two union  ist gains, one in Radnorshire and one in the Denbigh District. In Ireland, as has already been mentioned, the Nationalists lost one seat (at Mid-Tyrone) and sitting Liberals were defeated by union  ists at North Antrim and South Tyrone.

In England the position was markedly different. In 1906 the Government had held 338 of a total of 465 seats, but in 1910 they sustained a net loss of 112 and fell back to a minority —226, as against the Opposition’s 239.2 These losses, of course, were not evenly spread over the whole country.1 They were much heavier in the south than in the north, and they occurred more in county divisions and in small boroughs than, with the exception of London, in big towns. Asquith expressed at least some of the truth when he told his constituents at East Fife, after a few days’ polling, that ‘the union  ist gains have been chiefly in the smaller boroughs and cathedral cities; the great industrial centres have mainly declared for Free Trade.…’k