Mr Balfour's Poodle(60)

Despite this and despite the complaint of one union  ist peer, Montagu of Beaulieu, that another amendment was ‘contrary to the spirit in which a second reading had been given to the bill’, the Opposition suffered from no lack of support in the division lobby. Cromer’s amendment to substitute the joint committee for the Speaker was carried by 183 to 44 and Lansdowne’s amendment to introduce the referendum by 253 to 40. On the latter occasion no less than twenty-seven of the peers voting in the minority were Campbell-Bannerman or Asquith creations—a different situation from that which had prevailed at the time of the great Reform Bill, when the holders of the older peerages had been somewhat more liberal than the new creations. Indeed Lansdowne’s difficulties were with his more extreme and not with his more moderate followers. Lord Willoughby de Broke, a young peer who had come into sudden prominence as an organiser of the die-hards, moved and carried to a division an amendment to make a general election and a referendum necessary in the case of all measures which came under Clause Two of the bill. Eighteen peers voted with him, but the Opposition leaders, finding this proposal rather strong meat even for their stomachs, went into the other lobby and helped to produce a majority vote of ninety. This division, it was suggested, showed the lines of the coming union  ist split. This is not entirely true, for although those who voted for the amendment were all for resistance à outrance, others who subsequently joined and even led them in this defiance were nearer to Lansdowne’s point of view at this stage. Thus Lord Willoughby also expressed grave misgivings about Lansdowne’s official ‘referendum’ amendment, but Lord Salisbury, who was later to add the weight of the whole Cecil faction to the die-hards, spoke strongly in its favour.1

But whatever the state of internal union  ist Party relations the salient feature of the committee stage (and the position was in no way retracted at the report stage, which took place on July 13) was that the House of Lords had declined to accept the verdict of the second 1910 general election and had thrown down an unmistakable challenge to the Government. The bill which the House of Commons had passed had been changed out of all recognition.





XII The Disunion   of the union  ists


Confronted with this challenge the Cabinet sent a minute to the King declaring that the ‘contingency’ referred to in the November negotiations had arisen, and that Ministers would expect the King to act in accordance with the undertaking he had then given. The minute was dated July 14 and was couched in very firm language:

‘The Amendments made in the House of Lords to the Parliament Bill are destructive of its principle and purpose,’ it ran, ‘both in regard to finance and to general legislation. There is hardly one of them which, in its present form, the Government could advise the House of Commons, or the majority of the House of Commons could be persuaded, to accept. The Bill might just as well have been rejected on Second Reading. It follows that if, without any preliminary conference and arrangement, the Lords’ Amendments are in due course submitted to the House of Commons, they will be rejected en bloc by that House, and a complete conflict between the two Houses will be created. Parliament having been twice dissolved during the last eighteen months, and the future relations between the two Houses having been at both Elections a dominant issue, a third Dissolution is wholly out of the question. Hence, in the contingency contemplated, it will be the duty of Ministers to advise the Crown to exercise its Prerogative so as to get rid of the deadlock and secure the passing of the Bill. In such circumstances Ministers cannot entertain any doubt that the Sovereign would feel it to be his Constitutional duty to accept their advice.’a

Asquith’s biographers inform us that three days later the King indicated that he would accept this advice. It appears, however, from Sir Harold Nicolson’s life of King George Vb that when, a few days afterwards, the question arose of the exact stage at which the prerogative should be exercised, a slightly different interpretation of this agreement was given by the King on the one hand and his Ministers on the other. The King indicated by means of a letter from Lord Knollys to the Prime Minister that he was unwilling to agree to a creation before the Lords had been given an opportunity to pronounce on the Commons’ rejection of their amendments, and that, in any event, he feared that an en bloc rejection by the Commons would be likely to provoke the peers to more determined resistance. The difference was resolved by the Cabinet deferring to the King on both issues. It is difficult to believe that when it came to the point, even without the King’s remonstrance, Asquith would have forced a creation until the last possible moment.