5 - ‘Waiting Games’

Summary

AFTER months of infighting over Ireland, electoral reform and an increasingly unstable foreign policy, the Liberal Party was ‘like a man afflicted with epilepsy [whose each] fit [is] worse than the last’. On 9 June 1885 the government fell, having been defeated on the floor of the House of Commons on a part of its budget. By 24 June a new, but short-lived, minority Conservative government was in office with Lord Salisbury as Prime Minister and Richard Assheton Cross (who had been Home Secretary under Benjamin Disraeli) as Harcourt’s replacement. Despite Salisbury’s stated hostility to increased police powers in opposition, Cross asserted in a memo of July 1885 that this was a time of ‘national evil’ demanding certain ‘political necessities’. Some things undoubtedly had to change, however. There would be no more rewards, Cross said, for officers ‘merely doing their duty’, at least in theory. More importantly, Jenkinson’s nebulous role at the Home Office had to be sorted out once and for all along with all ‘questions of difference’ left over from the previous administration.

As Cross outlined in a lengthy memo, Monro’s control over the Metropolitan Police force and ‘the detective part of it in particular’ was no longer the subject of debate. Jenkinson’s ‘abnormal and… temporary’ office existed ‘solely in consequence of… national danger’ and for the time being, both he and Monro had to work together ‘as members of a Cabinet’ and to communicate to one another ‘all information… as to… conspiracies’. Jenkinson lost most of his remaining thirteen RIC detectives in London (who, as Henderson had noticed, weren’t even Irish) as well as his ability to organize ‘secret watching’ – now the exclusive preserve of the Metropolitan Police. Nevertheless, he continued to be ‘at liberty to communicate or not to communicate to Mr. Monro the names of his informants, similar liberty being allowed to Mr. Monro’. Cross thought he was merely splitting the difference, as he confessed to the new Irish viceroy and fourth earl of Carnarvon, but in truth the relationship between Jenkinson (now weakened considerably) and Monro (still deprived of access to his rival’s informants) continued to deteriorate.