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David Lloyd George: the Reform of British landholding and the Budget of 1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Bentley B. Gilbert
Bentley B. Gilbert
Affiliation:
University of Illinois
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Extract

Between the summer of 1912 and the summer of 1914, while the British political world seethed over Marconi, the National Health Insurance doctors' revolts, Home Rule, and the cost of oil-fired battleships, the chancellor of the exchequer, David Lloyd George, himself a centre of controversy, began to put together a legislative project to reconstruct the system of British land holding. He saw land reform as the major effort of his political career. Not only would it break up the monopoly of the squire in the countryside, but it would snatch away also the untaxed profits of the city land speculator. With a new system of land valuation, uniform throughout the kingdom, local authority rating resources would be immensely broadened, making possible the imposition upon local government of wide new responsibilities in public and personal health, education and housing. Land courts would set higher wages for labourers and lower rents for farmers, all at the expense of the landowner.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 117 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1 On the origins of Lloyd George's land-reform proposals in the 1909 Budget see Gilbert, Bentley B., ‘David Lloyd George, land, the budget and social reform’, American Historical Review, lccci, 5 (12. 1976), 1058–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Frank Owen does not mention it at all. Thomas Jones devotes, in all, half a paragraph to the land-inquiry report and ignores all that came after (Jones, Thomas, Lloyd George (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1951), pp. 41–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Even Peter Rowland's generally competent new biography discusses the whole campaign in a page and a half and totally misconstrues the crisis of rating reform in the 1914 Budget (Rowland, Peter, David Lloyd George (London, 1975). pp. 269–70, 274–5).Google Scholar

3 The first study devoted entirely to land reform is a long and scholarly but singularly ill-founded essay: Emy, H. V., ‘The land campaign: Lloyd George as a social reformer’, in Taylor, A. J. P., ed., Lloyd George, twelve essays (London, 1971), pp. 35–68.Google Scholar This tells more about land theory, land reformers and Walter Runciman than it does about Lloyd George and social reform. A later thinner study is Douglas, Roy, ‘God gave the land to the people’, in Morris, A. J. A., ed., Edwardian radicalism (London, 1974), pp 148–61.Google Scholar Both these investigations concentrate on extra–parliamentary pressures for a single tax, land nationalization, a limited site-value taxation, and neglect the place of Lloyd George and the impact of land reform in his career.

4 Hobson, John A., The crisis of liberalism: new issues of democracy (London, 1909), pp. vii–x, 133–5.Google Scholar

5 Nation, 6 January 1912.

6 L.G. papers, House of Lords Record Office, C/21/1/17, 7 pp.

7 The best source on the breakfast, the exact date of which seems to be impossible to fix, is Briggs, Asa, Social thought and social action, a study of the work of Seebohm Rowntree, 1871–1954 (London, 1961), pp. 64–5.Google Scholar Briggs notes that L.G.'s biographers have been ‘strangely reticent’ about the land campaign (Briggs, , Rowntree, p. 67).Google Scholar

8 Briggs, , Rowntree, pp. 65–70.Google Scholar

9 For an account of L.G.'s first explanation of the land campaign to the cabinet see Gainford papers, Nuffield college, vol. xxxix, J. A. Pease diary, 23 July 1912.

10 L.G. Papers, C/2/1/9 L. St G. Heath to L.G., 17 August 1912.

11 See A. R. M. Lockwood to Bonar Law, 22 August 1912, Hotel Stern, Marienbad, Bonar Law papers, House of Lords Record Office, 27/1/50. Colonel Mark Lockwood was a prominent Unionist M.P. He reported a long interview with L.G. in which the chancellor, after eliciting solemn promises of secrecy, had described his land programme and his thinking on Ulster. Clearly L.G. had intended these remarks to be passed on.

12 Lord Hugh Cecil to Bonar Law, 20 July 1912, Bonar Law papers, 26/5/32.

13 See J. A. S. Scott, president of the Newcastle Liberal Club, to J. St G. Heath, 16 August 1912, L.G. papers, C/2/1/12; E. Richard Cross to L. G., 21 August 1912, L.G., 21 Aug. 1912, L.G. papers, C/2/1/13.

14 On L.G.'s reaction to some Haldane pronouncements early in 1913 on the task before the government, see Wilson, Trevor, ed., The political diaries of C. P. Scott, 1911–1928 (London, 1970), pp. 68–70, 16 January 1913.Google Scholar

15 Professional health reformers looked far more to Haldane than to L.G. George Newman writing to McKenna declining the chairmanship of the newly created board of control (of mental deficients) was full of optimism. A new world, he said, was about to open at the Board of Eduction, school hygiene, physical education, feeding. It would begin the reconstruction of the race and take the burden off the Insurance Act. Dr George Newman to R. McKenna, 12 April 1913. McKenna papers, Churchill College 4/4/20. All of this would be reflected in the 1914 Budget.

16 Addison, Christopher, Politics from within (London, 1924), i, 28–9.Google Scholar Haldane guarded jealously his reputation as the Cabinet's contact with advanced social thought. In July 1913 he characteristically produced some proposals for land reform not far from Lloyd George's own. See ‘L.G. notes on an interview with Haldane’, 23 July 1913, L.G. papers, C/4/17/3.

17 Rowntree reported in late August that the urban report was about half done (Rowntree to L.G., 26 August 1913, L.G. papers, C/2/2/48). The rural inquiry had been completed six months earlier and was ready for the printer in April (J. St G. Heath to L. G., 4 April 1913, L.G. papers, C/2/2/9).

18 ‘Land’, ‘Secret’, P.R.O. Cab. 37/116/56, 21 August 1913, 9 pp.

19 ‘C.H.’, ‘The Land Question’, P.R.O., Cab. 37/116/66 n.d., printer's mark 6 October 1913.

20 L. G. to Rowntree, 25 August 1913, L.G. papers, C/2/2/44.

21 See L. G. to C. P. Scott, 4 September 1913, L.G. papers, C/8/1/9; Riddell, Lord, More pages from my diary (London, 1934), p. 79, 6 September 1913.Google Scholar

22 This assertion evoked an angry letter from the general secretary of the Carnarvonshire Constitutional Association (L.G. papers, C/10/1/33).

23 David Lloyd George, ‘The rural land problem: what it is’: speech at Bedford, 11 October 1913, Liberal Publications Department, 1913, 11 pp.

24 Gainford papers, diary, J. A. Pease, 14 10 1913.Google Scholar The memorandum presented at the 14 October cabinet, ‘Cabinet note on Ministry of Land, October 1913’, does not appear to have survived as a separate cabinet paper. It was, however, reprinted early the next year at the end of the much larger document that Lloyd George worked out to explain his programme (see P.R.O., Cab. 37/118/5, pp. 22–3).

25 Asquith to George V, 18 October 1913, Asquith papers, vol. vii, Bodleian library.

26 See Riddell, , Diary, 17 10 1913, p. 181.Google Scholar

27 George, David Lloyd, ‘The Rural Land, Problems and the Remedy’: speech at Swindon, 22 10 1913, Liberal Publications Department, 1913, 22 pp.Google Scholar

28 Until Reading, the Liberal by-election record in 1913, in contrast to 1912, had been relatively good. The party had won two seats, one from the Conservatives and one from Labour, and lost one to the Conservatives.

29 Lloyd George's announcement at Swindon that National Health Insurance funds would be invested in agricultural labourers' cottages had hurt. There were reports of huge posters: ‘Reading Electors! Do you want your Insurance taxes fooled away on wild-cat country cottage schemes?’, National Insurance Gazette, 22 November 1913. The Times concluded that people were apathetic about the land. On the election, see The Times, 3 November, 5 November 1913.

30 This dinner is something of a mystery. Although it was held at Number 11 and Lloyd George appears to have been enough at home to take notes of it, the ministers invited were all cronies of Asquith not of Lloyd George (‘Notes of a dinner at Eleven Downing Street,’ 12 November 1913, L.G. papers, C/14/1/10).

31 See R. L. Outhwaite to L. G., 13 Novermber 1913, L.G. papers, C/10/2/32; P. Wilson Raffin to L.G. 17 December 1913, C/2/4/11. Outhwaite, spokesman for the land-value tax in the House of Commons was responsible for the only new seat the Liberals had won in the two years, 1911–12, and he had taken it from Labour.

32 L. G. to Sir John A. Kempe, 13 November 1912, Cd. 7315, ‘Departmental committee on local taxation', Final Report 1914, p. iv. H. V. Emy, making a case for the single taxers’ influence, suggests that their ‘pressure’ was successful when L.G. on 13 December ‘accepted’ the argument that land reform should include rating reform and ‘admitted the need for national aid for local authority service’ (Emy, , ‘Land campaign’, in Taylor, , ed., Lloyd George, p. 59).Google Scholar

33 The arguments between a tax and a rate are set out in detail in P.R.O., Cab., 37/117/92, ‘Part I, The rating of site values; Part II, a national site value tax.’ ‘D.LI.G.,’ 13 December 1913, 10 pp. L.G. was at pains to point out in this paper that separate site value rating had ‘no connexion whatever with a single tax’.

34 L. G. to P. W. Raffin, 1 January 1914, L.G. papers, C/2/4/1.

35 Wilson, , ed., Scott diaries, pp. 75–6.Google Scholar See also on this interview Riddell, , Diary, p. 198, 23 01 1914.Google Scholar

36 Riddell, , Diary, pp. 197–8, 18 01 1914.Google Scholar

37 British Weekly, 22 January 1914.

38 Central Land and Housing Council, ‘Speech delivered by Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P. at Glasgow on February 4th 1914.’ The formal organization of the ‘Central Land and Housing Council’, the political instrument that would be the Liberal party's vehicle for land reform agitation came with speech by Asquith at the National Liberal club on 9 December 1913. Theoretically it was non-political but its offices at 38 Parliament Street occupied the same building as the Liberal whip's Office at 412 and L.G. obtained the money for its support from the whip's fund. See L.G.'s description of his search for financial support for his budget and land campaigns (Lloyd George to Lord Reading (Rufus Issacs), 14 August 1929, Reading papers, India Office library Eur.f., 118/82).

39 H. of C. Deb. lviii (27 February 1914), Col. 2102–4.

40 Asquith to the king, 5 March 1914, Asquith papers, vol. vii.

41 Gainford papers, J. A. Pease diary 1911–1915, 24 April 1914.

42 British Museum Add. MSS 46336, John Burns papers, lvi, Diary, 1914.

43 H. of C. Deb. lxii (4 May 1914), Col. 56–94.

44 Wilson, , ed., Scott diary, p. 85.Google Scholar

45 H. of C. Deb. lxii (4 May 1914), Col. 69–70.

46 For a statement of income and expenditure expectations see Montagu, E. S., ‘Financial statements 1914–15’, 5 05 1914Google Scholar, H. of C. paper 212, Parliamentary papers, vol. l, 1914, Accounts and Papers, vol. I. The large items of expense were education, poor relief, police, public health, roads, National Health Insurance and tuberculosis sanitaria (also part of N.H.I.).

47 Mallet, Bernard and George, C. Oswald, British budgets, 1913–14 to 1920–21 (London, 1929), p. 29.Google Scholar

48 H. of C. Deb. lxii (7 May 1914), Col. 460–1.

49 H. of C. Deb. lxii (7 May 1914), Col. 462. In fact, as the Nation's London Diary confirmed two weeks later, ‘the talk’ in the lobbies was of a July election (Nation, 23 May 1914).

50 Revenue bills, although not new, had become a regular feature of House of Commons procedure since 1911. They were supposed to cover financial business – for instance, the imposition of new types of taxes that required extensive debate and could not properly be dealt with in the tightly scheduled Finance Bill, which included only changes in customs and excise and the renewal of income taxes. Then since the Parliament Act, with the obligation on the speaker to certify that the Finance Bill was purely a money bill, a separate measure to handle the administrative side of tax-raising had become legally necessary. Additional pressure was added with the passage, in 1913, of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act. This had been made necessary by a judicial decision holding that the collection of taxes before the passage of the long-delayed 1909–10 Finance Bill had been illegal. The Act therefore authorized the imposition of taxes immediately after the Budget statement but required that the Finance Bill become law by a specified date, in 1914, 5 August.

51 H. of C. Deb. lxii (11 May 1914), Col. 790.

52 Leading article, ‘The new taxes and their incidence’, Nation, 16 May 1914.

53 G. Wallace Carter to L. G., 28 May 1914, L.G. papers, C/2/4/22. The second volume of the land-inquiry report, on urban areas, had been published in March and received little notice.

54 B. S. Rowntree to L. G., 12 May 1914, L.G. papers, C/2/4/16.

55 Rowntree to L. G. and F. L. Stevenson, 25, 28 May 1914, L.G. papers, C/2/4/20, 21.

56 Riddell, , Diary, p. 212, 23 05 1914.Google Scholar

57 Report by G. Ward Humphrey, n.d. (covering note, 7 June 1914), L.G. papers, C/11/1/58.

58 C. F. G. Masterman to Arthur Ponsonby, 30 May 1914, MS Eng. hist. C660, fos. 9–11, Arthur Ponsonby papers, Bodleian library.

59 The Times, 1 June, 3 June 1914.

60 There is nothing in the Lloyd George papers or the cabinet papers on this change. The only historian who appears to have understood what actually happened in this complicated episode, even though he did not pursue it, is, unsurprisingly, Halevy, Elie. See The Rule of democracy (University Paperback edition, New York, 1961), p. 349 n.Google Scholar

61 Riddell, , Diary, pp. 214–15, 13, 14, 20 06 1914.Google Scholar

62 The Times, 18 June 1914. Mr T. Gibson Bowles, the plaintiff in the suit that had made necessary the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act, and former Conservative M.P. turned Liberal, had written to The Times on 17 June pointing out that the house could not, even if it wished, give L.G. the money he was requesting, having deprived itself of that right many years earlier. He cited the report of the public monies committee of 1857 which stipulated that grants of Ways and Means must be kept within votes of supply (The Times, 17 June 1914).

63 The Times, 19 June 1914.

64 On this cabinet see The Times, 23 June 1914. The Times' parliamentary correspondent felt that the decision was entirely the prime minister's. But despite his offhand statement about it, Asquith clearly had not made up his mind easily. Morley reported to Almeric Fitzroy the next day that the P.M. was ‘writhing with humiliation’ at having his government take back half its budget (Fitzroy, Almeric, Memoirs (London, n.d.), [1925], ii, 553, 23 June 1914.Google Scholar

65 H. of C. Deb. lxiii (22 June 1914), Col. 1589–90. For the changes in the bill see Montagu, E. S., ‘Revised Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for the year, 1914–15’, 23 06 1914Google Scholar, House of Commons Paper 293, Parliamentary papers, vol. l, Accounts and Papers vol. i.

66 H. of C. Deb. lxiii (25 June 1914), Col. 2129–34.

67 On 13 July, the Cabinet had given up an autumn session, deciding to end the current session ‘as soon as may be’ and to meet again in November or December (J. A. Pease diary, 15 July 1914, Gainford papers, vol. xxxix).

68 New Statesman, 27 June 1914.

69 Nation, 27 June 1914.

70 Riddell, , Diary, p. 218.Google Scholar