H. H. Asquith
1908-1915
Liberal
"Squiffy manning the Gate"
While the event that led to the 1915 general election occurred in 1914, the seeds were sown with the introduction of the third Home Rule Bill in 1912. The bill, which in retrospect was rather mild and in many ways a shortcoming after years of promises after Gladstone’s conversion to the Home Rule argument in the mid-1880’s; was met with fear, rage, distrust, and unease by those on the Tory benches. The reasons for opposing the bill were many and numerous, though differed depending on the group in question. The mainland Conservative Party, led by the Canadian-born and former Ulster resident Andrew Bonar Law, opposed the bill for fear it could lead to colonial holdings demanding similar settlements and in effect break up the Empire. Unionists in the provinces of Connacht, Leinster, and Munster opposed the bill due to their fear of becoming an even smaller minority within the country (they would comprise anywhere from fifteen to five percent of the population, give or take Ulster), as well as their fears of high taxation and being shut off from the rest of Britain via trade barriers. Ulster Unionists meanwhile opposed Home Rule due to a variety of reasons including those of the Conservatives and Southern Unionists, but also due to their fears of being a persecuted minority and the perceived power of the Catholic Church in a Dublin Home Rule parliament (fears were only increased after two Papal decrees,
Ne Temere which was a perceived threat to Protestants in mixed marriages, and
Motu proprio which seemed to put the Catholic church and its clergy above the law; events in Castledawson in 1912 when a group of Protestant Sunday school children bumped into an Ancient Order of Hibernians event, the AOH men apparently tried to attack the children, though it later emerged the children ran into the nearby woods, fearful of the AOH men that they had been told to fear.)
Opposition to the Home Rule bill came in all shades of opinion on the Conservative benches. Southern Unionists and more moderate members of the Conservative Party, such as Arthur Balfour, took a more passive approach, using parliamentary means to oppose Home Rule. While Unionists had a majority of the seats in Ulster, Southern Unionists generally could only count on certain Dublin seats for their survival (ironically they were better represented in Great Britain compared to Ireland, with several Tory MPs with Irish connections, such as Walter Long, calling themselves Southern Unionists despite holding mainland seats.) The Conservative leader in the Lords, Lord Lansdowne, the former Foreign Secretary, was a Southern Unionist, he was adamant that the bill should be killed outright, with no Home Rule anywhere on the island of Ireland. Noted lawyer and Southern Unionist Member of Parliament for the University of Dublin, Sir Edward Carson, shared Lansdowne’s view, but he reasoned that using Ulster Unionism as a way to present opposition to the bill, would suffice in killing the bill outright. Bonar Law, the son of a Scottish Presbyterian Minister who had at one stage settled his family in Ulster, had a strong connection to the province. The Tory leader became increasingly frustrated with Southern Unionists for their (in his view) failure to fight for their quarter and survival; Ulster was his priority to keep in the United Kingdom, the Southern Unionists could be thrown by the wayside for all he cared.
Through a variety of events ranging from a speech at the Ulster Hall in Belfast, to inspecting a march past by the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) at Balmoral in 1912, Bonar Law’s rhetoric and stance on the Irish question became increasingly hardline and radical. In 1913 he sent a memorandum to King George V, which the monarch had requested to sound out the views of the Conservative Party. Bonar Law’s length memorandum asserted that the British constitution was under threat and that civil war was on the horizon in Ireland. Dissolution or the dismissal of Asquith in favour of someone who would request of dissolution of parliament was the only way to avoid these two problems from getting progressively worse. The dismissal of a Prime Minister with a majority in the Commons by the monarch had last been attempted in 1834 when William IV had attempted to dismiss Robert Peel, this was quickly reversed after the condemnations from many in the political arena. The King, while legally allowed to dismiss Asquith, was warned by the Prime Minister in no uncertain terms that it would be very much unwise to attempt to dismiss him.
Such was the feeling of anger on the Conservative benches, that calls of ‘traitor’ when the issue came up in the House and the Prime Minister. Herbert Asquith was present, were not uncommon. In one instance after several members were ordered out of the chamber by the Speaker of the House of Commons, James Lowther, Winston Churchill and J. E. B. Seely, the Secretary of State for War, were walking out of the chamber when Ronald MacNeil, an Ulster Unionist MP happened upon them. He was so incensed by the Home Rule bill that he seized the Speaker’s copy of the Standing Orders which he then proceeded to hurl with alarming accuracy at Churchill’s head. The debates of the third Home Rule Bill were among some of the worst scenes of parliamentary disorder and ‘chaos’ seen in during the twentieth century.
Bonar Law’s opposition to the bill took an alarming turn in 1914 when he happened upon a strategy with Lansdowne in the Lords, to help make the enforcing of the Home Rule bill in effect impossible for the Liberal government. The Army (Annual) Act was a bill introduced annually upon which the running and discipline of the nation’s army depended upon. If the act were not passed, the position of a soldier would be in effect the same as that of a civilian. By refusing to pass the act, parliament could perhaps make the army useless as an instrument for the government to force its policy, domestic and foreign, through. Bonar Law, Lansdowne, and the Conservative benches idea was to amend the bill so as to ensure that military discipline and order would be nigh on impossible in Ulster until after a general election, something they had been demanding for well over a year. The bill presented a catch-22 for the government. If they passed it the opposition would have won a great victory, while if it was rejected the opposition would have succeeded in preventing military order and discipline from being put into force in Ulster. What makes this alarming is the fact that on the continent it would appear that the drums of war were beginning to beat ever louder until eventually, they would hit a crescendo sparking a supposedly inevitable European conflict. Britain would be in no way ready to fight said conflict without the passage of this bill. No government would be able to continue to run and function under these circumstances, making a general election in effect a certainty.
Bonar Law waited out for the first few months of 1914 while the date for renewal of the bill on the 30th April 1914, came ever closer. The Conservative leader’s resolve over the issue appeared to wane in March, with an apparent opposition to the move being made by the likes of Balfour and Curzon. The party backbenches were littered with many former military officers who were alarmed with what their party leader’s actions could lead to for the military. After a meeting with Carson’s second in command in Ulster, James Craig, and Lansdowne in late March, Bonar Law was resolved to maintain his strategy on the matter. The amendment was tabled by the Conservative and Unionist majority in the Lords, which was passed by that house soon after. It was struck down by the Liberal and Irish Parliamentary Party dominated Commons soon after. The two factions were at metaphoric loggerheads over the issue, neither side wanting to budge. Bonar Law felt betrayed by Asquith after a series of meetings in which Bonar Law had misunderstood Asquith’s assurance he would bring up an Ulster exemption in a cabinet meeting as an assurance he would
push for Ulster exemption in the cabinet. As the time ticked out for the renewal of the bill, Asquith panicked and realised that without the army, Home Rule would be virtually impossible to implement. As a result along with Home Rule bill itself, a suspensory act was also added to the statute books along with the bill, in effect pushing the issue into the next parliamentary session.
The crescendo in Europe finally occurred with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on the 28th June 1914. This set into motion the intricate alliance system in Europe and would see the continent descend into war in little under a month. Britain, however, was to remain out of the conflict, with its military in effect in disorder, leaving its assurance to protect Belgian neutrality mere words on paper. The conflict, which would until conclude a little bit after Christmas of that year, saw a victory for the ‘Central Powers’ alliance of Germany and would usher in a period of German dominance on the continent.
By the next year, Asquith’s government could no longer continue on in its current form. On top of the overhanging threat of civil war in Ireland, which had yet to materialise, the issues of women’s suffrage and the various industrial strikes up and down the country, saw the country and the government brought to an effect standstill. Under these circumstances, Asquith was forced to call a general election for the 9th June 1915. The perceived weakness and inaction of the Liberal government on these issues, among others, seemed to spell defeat for the government.
Indeed the country on the 10th June 1915 woke up to the news that the ‘National Unionists’ (the new name of the newly formed party organisation between the Conservatives, Liberal Unionists, and linked to the Scottish and Ulster Unionists) under Bonar Law had won a strong majority over Asquith’s Liberal Party. Home Rule seemed to be dead in the water on account of the strong Unionist majorities in both Houses of parliament. While the threat of the UVF inciting a paramilitary campaign against the government receded, the threat of the Nationalist equivalent - the Irish Volunteer Force (IVF) increased very much, this is despite its reluctant leader, the IPP leader John Redmond, seeking to diffuse the situation and prevent civil war in Ireland.
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[1]Some sections applied from a stencil on the Irish Home Rule crisis from the Tory/Unionist perspective.
