Mr Balfour's Poodle(45)

What Lloyd George wanted, indeed, was not a limited agreement covering the points in dispute at the conference, but a coalition Government, with an agreed programme on all the major issues of the day. He sought this, not by hints and intermediaries, but by a peculiarly straightforward method,1 and perhaps for this reason his proposals, outside a quite small circle, remained a well-kept secret for a number of years.

On August 17 he addressed from Criccieth a long memorandum. He began by stressing the number of problems awaiting solution, and the urgency of dealing with them which was imposed upon the nation by the rise of foreign competitors. Yet none of these problems could be effectively dealt with ‘without incurring temporary unpopularity’. In an evenly balanced political situation no party could afford this, and so the true interests of the country suffered. Furthermore, there was a tendency for the extremist tail of each party to wag the dog of the moderate elements: ‘As a rule the advanced sections of a party, being propagandist, are the most active, the best organised, the most resolute, and therefore the most irresistible.’ Joint action would make it unnecessary to pay ‘too much attention to the formulae and projects of rival faddists’. An additional argument was provided by Lloyd George’s belief that neither party commanded the services of more than ‘half a dozen first-rate men’. Other posts had to be filled with politicians of very limited ability. Coalition would obviously help to repair this deficiency.

What were the urgent questions which would justify the calling into existence of this ‘Ministry of All the Talents’, and what were the lines upon which it was to deal with them? The Chancellor of the Exchequer was fairly specific in his delineation of the issues, but less so in his proposals. He listed twelve points. First came matters of social reform. Housing was to be improved, some method of curbing excessive drinking was to be devised, the Poor Law was to be overhauled and recast, and a system of insurance, directed more against the ‘accidents of life’ than against the foreseeable difficulty of old age, was to be developed. Under only one heading within this group of subjects did Lloyd George go beyond the expression of aspirations. This heading was ‘unemployment’, but the subject dealt with was not its prevention (which the Chancellor apparently regarded as impossible) but the mitigation of its effects by state insurance. This, however, would have to be done in the teeth of opposition from the industrial offices, and, more importantly, from their multitudinous army of agents and collectors. These agents could not be bought out, because the money involved in paying compensation would ‘crush the scheme and destroy its usefulness’. They could not be incorporated in the new arrangement, because this would make impossible a great lowering of the costs of collection. Yet ‘they visit every house, they are indefatigable, they are often very intelligent, and a Government which attempted to take over their work without first of all securing the co-operation of the other party would inevitably fail in its undertaking’. The insurance agents had apparently driven large nails into the coffin of the party system.

Then came a series of headings dealing with wider subjects. ‘National Reorganisation’ demanded the settlement of the denominational issue in education policy on a non-party basis, and a great extension of technical instruction. ‘National Defence’ involved the closer scrutiny of service spending in some directions and the deliberate encouragement of greater outlay in others. A system of compulsory selective service, following the Swiss model, should be sympathetically investigated. Local government reform was necessary, and ‘the various problems connected with state assistance to trade and commerce could be enquired into with some approach to intelligent and judicial impartiality.…’ It was hinted that tariff reform and transport reorganisation (possibly involving the nationalisation of the railways) were suitable subjects for investigation in this way. The land should be more efficiently farmed and this involved both parties turning their backs on the dangerously short-sighted policy of encouraging smallholdings. Big farms, adequate capital, and intelligent management were more sensible if less immediately popular items for an agricultural programme. “Imperial Problems’ was an interesting section only because it included the problem of Ireland—the other points here were trite. ‘In this connection the settlement of the Irish question would come up for consideration,’ Lloyd George cautiously began. ‘The advantages of a non-party treatment of this vexed problem are obvious. Parties might deal with it without being subject to the embarrassing dictation of extreme partisans, whether from (sic) Nationalists or Orangemen.’