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Asquith at Paisley: the Content of British Liberalism at the End of Its Era
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2014
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Two political campaigns in the Scottish Lowlands mark the beginning and the end of the half century during which the Liberal party rose, had its era of greatness, and fell. They are Midlothian and Paisley. In the first, William Gladstone made use of the new democracy of the Reform Act of 1867 by giving many speeches to vast crowds in a concentrated, spectacular campaign. He also broke new ground by setting out in these speeches the whole sweep of a political point of view, providing both contemporaries and historians with a convenient study in depth of its assumptions and goals. Midlothian was a legend before the cheers had subsided. It began a new era in British politics.
The second of these landmark campaigns, that at Paisley, saw Herbert Henry Asquith, the last of Gladstone's protégés as well as the last Prime Minister of a Liberal government, stumping the streets of that industrial town in the first weeks of 1920. It, too, was the object of intense national interest and resulted in important political changes. Similarly, Asquith's speeches covered the whole range of national problems, thus supplying once more a convenient presentation in depth of Liberalism as the leader of the Liberal party conceived it. Paisley provides both a window into the political mêlée which saw the collapse of the Liberals and the rise of Labour, and a reference point in the history of Liberal thought in Britain. In brief, this is consensus Liberalism as it stood at the end of its half century of power and influence.
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References
1. Midlothian took place — 1879-1880 — some years after Gladstone entered upon the premiership of the first Liberal ministry in 1868, but it was looked to for decades thereafter as the heroic starting point for liberal politics. For the campaign and the ideas presented in it, see Kelley, Robert, “Midlothian: A Study in Politics and Ideas,” Victorian Studies, IV (1960), 119–40Google Scholar.
2. Gladstone's speeches were published in a special volume, and so were Asquith's. They appeared as: Asquith, Herbert H., The Paisley Policy (London, 1920)Google Scholar. In this study, reliance will also be placed upon newspaper accounts of the speeches, for they alone indicate crowd reactions, and often show, as well, where Asquith intended to give greater emphasis by adding sections in the published texts.
3. Contemporary estimates placed Asquith in the middle of his party, ideologically speaking. The Nation (London), for example, entitled its commentary upon the campaign, “The Mind of the Left Centre.” The campaign, it remarked, “carries with it the impress of the ‘common mind’ in Liberalism.” Nation, XXVI (1920), 662–63Google Scholar.
4. The foregoing may be clearly seen in any of the newspapers of January 1920. Consult especially the Times, Jan. 15 and 30, 1920.
5. Ibid., Jan. 12, 1920; Manchester Guardian, Jan. 14, 1920. Haldane's steady progression over to the Labour Party in these years is clearly described in his memoirs. Richard Burdon Haldane (Viscount Haldane), An Autobiography (Garden City, 1929), pp. 325–30Google Scholar.
6. Times, Jan. 16, 1920.
7. John Maynard Keynes, long close to the Asquith household, wrote this vivid picture of its world: “Those who knew Lord Oxford intimately cannot think of him except in the environment of a unique family. He was the solid core round which that brilliant circle revolved — the centre of the gayest and brightest world, the widest-flung yet the simplest hospitality of modern England. With an incomparable hostess opposite him, with abundance, indiscretion and all that was most rash and bold flying round him, Lord Oxford would . . . enjoy the flow of reason and of unreason, stroking his chin, shrugging his shoulders, a wise and tolerant umpire.” J. M. Keynes, Essays in Biography (New York, 1933), p. 49.
8. Times, Jan. 12, 15, and 22, 1920. The standard biography of Asquith is Spender, J. A. and Asquith, Cyril, Life of Herbert Henry Asquith, Lord Oxford and Asquith (London, 1932)Google Scholar. A necessary added perspective is provided in a penetrating short account by McCallum, Ronald B., Asquith (London, 1936)Google Scholar.
9. Times, Jan. 12, 14, 15, 1920; Guardian, Jan. 22, 1920. See the Labour paper, Forward (Glasgow), Mar. 6, 1920Google Scholar, for commentary on the constituency's character.
10. Guardian, Jan. 14-23, 1920; Times, Jan. 19, 20, 22, 1920; Forward, Jan. 24, 1920. McCallum observes that the House of Lords issue, fought through by Asquith, plunged to the core of British life. “The deep gulf which this question placed between parties is important in Asquith's life. The governing classes never forgave him for this act.” McCallum, Asquith, p. 68.
11. Times, Jan. 24, 1920. He was not pleased at the prospect. “I don't look forward with much pleasure to the adventure,” he wrote to a friend. “For one thing I am not very fond of going back to Scotland, for another, the issue is extremely doubtful.” Letter dated Jan. 22, 1920, in Asquith, Herbert Henry, H. H. A.: Letters of the Earl of Oxford and Asquith to a Friend (London, 1933), I, 123Google Scholar.
12. Guardian, Jan. 27, 1920.
13. Times, Feb. 10, 1920.
14. Forward, Feb. 7, 1920.
15. Letter dated Jan. 30, 1920, in Asquith, , H. H. A.: Letters, I, 124–26Google Scholar.
16. Guardian, Jan. 30, 1920; see also Times, Jan. 29, 1920.
17. Spender, and Asquith, , Life of Asquith, II, 329;Google ScholarTimes, Feb. 7, 1920; Guardian, Feb. 7, 9, 12, 1920.
18. On February 9, he received a letter from Gladstone's three sons, saying: “May the remembrance of Midlothian in 1880 unite all Liberals in Paisley.” Guardian, Feb. 9, 1920. He read this letter at subsequent meetings, appealed to the Midlothian example repeatedly.
19. Times, Feb. 12, 1920; forward, Feb. 14, 1920. The events of this remarkable campaign cannot be described in detail in this article. They are, however, copiously set forth in the January and February issues of the Times, the Guardian, and the Forward.
20. Results in Guardian, Feb. 26, 1920. Ramsay Macdonald, writing in the Forward, Mar. 6, 1920, said that Asquith's victory rested upon a big swing to him of normally Conservative votes. The Forward's editor found hope for the future in the fact that the vote for the Labour man was actually fifty percent higher than in the previous election, when the three candidates had been almost even.
21. In this general analysis of the importance of Paisley, I am much indebted to Francis H. Herrick of Mills College, whose keen observations greatly clarified the situation for me. Contemporary commentary is to be found in: Times, Feb. 26, 1920; Guardian, Feb. 12, 13, 26, 1920; Nation (London), XXVI (1920), 588-89, 662–63Google Scholar; Forward, Feb. 14, 1920. Other opinions are set forth in Fortnightly Review, CXIII (1920), 537–47Google Scholar; Review, II (1920), 222Google Scholar; Nation (London), XXVI (1920), 761–62Google Scholar; New Statesman, XIV (1920), 604–06Google Scholar.
22. Times, Feb. 26, 1920.
23. Times, Jan. 28, 1920; Forward, Jan. 31, Feb. 7, 1920. This position is strikingly reminiscent of the left-wing Democratic Pendleton Plan advanced after the American Civil War. See Sharkey, Robert P., Money, Class and Party; An Economic Study of Civil War and Reconstruction (Baltimore, 1959), pp. 99–101Google Scholar.
24. Asquith, , Paisley Policy, pp. 28–29Google Scholar. He had a unique faculty for making momentous issues seem common place. “The bias of his mind,” his son Cyril wrote, “was to presume that everything — himself included — was ordinary, until the reverse was demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt.” Spender and Asquith, , Life of Asquith, I, 20–21Google Scholar.
25. No more venerable Liberal economic concern exists. This was an inter-national tradition, the conviction that inflation hurt the poor — whose income was relatively inflexible — and enriched the already wealthy. For example, insistence upon hard money, or at any rate upon sound money (paper convertible to gold), was a major cry of left-wing Jacksonian Democrats in the United States, and this theme continued through the century. See Kelley, Robert, “The Thought and Character of Samuel J. Tilden: The Democrat as Inheritor,” Historian, XXVI (1964), 176–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26. Asquith, , Paisley Policy, p. 23Google Scholar; Guardian, Jan. 28, 1920.
27. Asquith, , Paisley Policy, pp. 24–25Google Scholar; Guardian, Jan. 28, 1920. The Army was always a peculiarly resonant issue to Gladstonian Liberals. The Navy was felt to be necessary, but the Army seemed to them a citadel of aristocratic privilege, and a constant force leading to adventurous interventions abroad, and imperialism. See McCallum, R. B., “The Liberal Outlook, “ pp. 70–72Google Scholar, in Ginsberg, Morris (ed.), Law and Opinion in England in the 20th Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959)Google Scholar.
28. Asquith, , Paisley Policy, pp. 26–28Google Scholar; Guardian, Jan. 28, 1920. The issue of direct or indirect taxation was one with major social implications which had been bitterly fought over by Liberals and Conservatives for decades. The former believed taxes should be levied upon income groups with the ability to pay. Especially since the 1890's, a major goal of Liberal taxation “was not simply to defray the cost of governing the country, but to modify in the process the distribution of wealth.” Halévy, Elie, Imperialism and the Rise of Labour (New York, 1961), p. 316Google Scholar. See the whole of his revealing discussion of fiscal policy and its social implications, pp. 312-21. Similarly, the long lineage of the land tax idea, including its debt to Henry George, is described in Halévy, The Rule of Democracy (New York, 1961), pp. 294–95Google Scholar. It was, of course, Asquith's budget of 1907 which paved the way for social democracy by shifting taxes from the poor to the rich through a distinction between earned and unearned income, the latter carrying a heavier burden. Ibid., pp. 268ff.
29. Some of these phrases were added in the published speeches to make them even stronger and more emphatic. Asquith, , Paisley Policy, p. 29Google Scholar; Guardian, Jan. 28, 1920.
30. Asquith, , Paisley Policy, pp. 8–10Google Scholar; Guardian, Jan. 29, 1920.
31. This was no chance phrase. Asquith usually saw the world in empirical terms, not abstract, referring repeatedly throughout his career to this way of seeing t ings. He recorded his dissent from the Hegelian realism which swept Oxford when he was an undergraduate, taking his stand with the empiricists. Trained in classic literature, he viewed things in terms of the particular people involved, the personalities and their unique situations, always peculiarly the stance of the humanist, rather than in terms of classes, great movements, “social forces,” and the like. The concrete, the separate and the individual thing or person interested him. His strongest interest, aside from literature, was biography. This perspective on the world is eloquently revealed in his gracefully written memoirs, which are a forgotten gem of pungent reportage on his era. Earl of Oxford and Asquith, , Memories and Reflections, 1852-1927 (Boston, 1928)Google Scholar. See also Spender, and Asquith, , Life of Asquith, I, 66, 101-02, 109, 157, 200, 209Google Scholar. The contrast with Haldane, close friend of Asquith, yet lifelong Hegelian, is instructive. Talking of “ideals,” Haldane moved over to join Labour and the banner with the device, “nationalization.”
32. One of Asquith's greatest triumphs as Premier had been to solve the minimum wage issue in 1912 in precisely this way, by the establishment of local miner-employer boards in each district, presided over by an impartial government-appointed chairman, the board's function being to set the wage in the light of “local knowledge.” Spender, and Asquith, , Life of Asquith, I, 352–53Google Scholar. Indicating the importance he attached to this topic, sentences were added in the published volume of the Paisley speeches to make these points even more emphatic.
33. Each party, of course, felt that its aims were best for the entire nation, but the Liberals seem much more to have dwelt upon the idea that they could, in some unique sense, take a stance which was above class interest and based upon the needs of the whole community. This was a favorite theme of men as diverse and as widely separated in time as Lord Acton and J. M. Keynes. See Himmelfarb, Gertrude, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (Chicago, 1962), pp. 170–83Google Scholar, and Keynes, John Maynard, Essays in Persuasion (New York, 1932), pp. 323–28Google Scholar. Richard Hofstadter's comments on contemporary American Progressives' conception of their own image are relevant: the kind of state they sought for “would stand … where the middle class felt itself to be standing — in the middle, on neutral ground among self-seeking interests of all kinds.” Especially significant, he points out, is the rise in consumer self-identity, which Asquith's remarks clearly reveal. Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform, from Bryan to F.D.R. (New York, 1955), pp. 170, 210-24, 232Google Scholar. W. L. Guttsman has shown that the Liberal Party's cabinets did not become heavily middle-class until after 1906. The particular aspect of middle society from which they drew, however, was legal and professional, not business. See Guttsman, W. L., “The Changing Social Structure of the British Political Elite, 1886-1935,” Br. four. Soc., II (1952), 122–34Google Scholar. A. W. Martin establishes similar patterns in the Liberal Party in Australia in “The Legislative Assembly of New South Wales, 1856-1900,” The Australian Journal of Politics and History, II (1957), 46–67Google Scholar.
34. Asquith, , Paisley Policy, pp. 30–37Google Scholar; Guardian, Jan. 30, 1920.
35. He maintained, however, that royalty mineral rights of patches of ground — numbering in many hundreds — which produced profits on production going on in coal mines underneath, should be nationalized, without question.
36. Asquith, , Paisley Policy, pp. 11–14Google Scholar; Guardian, Jan. 29, 1920. Asquith first spoke of Home Rule All Round in his 1912 speech introducing the Irish Home Rule bill which was finally enacted. Halévy, Rule of Democracy, p. 546.
37. Asquith, , Paisley Policy, pp. 16–19Google Scholar; Guardian, Jan. 29, 1920.
38. Henry Winkler, to whom I am indebted for help in understanding aspects of this period, has observed that it was primarily among Liberals that these pronouncements caused excitement. See also McCallum, who writes that this “was the most radical step in his whole public life. For once he was in advance of public opinion. He was ridiculed for a fool and denounced as a traitor, yet within two years his policy was carried into effect.” McCallum, , Asquith, p. 135Google Scholar. His “bold statement” was “denounced at the time as ‘insanity’.” Spender, and Asquith, , Life of Asquith, II, 331.Google Scholar “I have been busy all morning,” he later wrote in his diary, “with my speech on Ireland. I can see from a letter I have got from Donald Maclean that the timid spirits of the party are anxious about the strategic side of Dominion Home Rule, and inclined to think that I have gone ‘too far.’ Of course I shall stick to my guns.” Oxford and Asquith, , Memories and Reflections, II, 224.Google Scholar Of course, he had advocated such a policy as long ago as 1910, as had Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in 1907, though at that time “dominion status” was not yet sufficiently clarified categorically to indicate effective independence. Halévy, , Rule of Democracy, pp. 537–41Google Scholar.
39. The complexity of the whole Irish issue, for Asquith, is revealed in the words of a recent author: “Scottish people had no love for the Irish. They had seen too much of them in the slums of the industrial areas for one thing, and they dreaded their religious influence for another.” In particular, they feared for the welfare of Ulster Presbyterians, Scottish in extraction, should they be placed under the rule of the Roman Catholic Irish majority. The Home Rule movement, she insists, had long reduced the Liberal vote in Scotland. After Gladstone began it, the Liberals remained powerful but “never recovered their old supremacy in Scotland.” Glover, Janet R., The Story of Scotland (New York, 1958), p. 375Google Scholar.
40. Asquith, , Paisley Policy, pp. 56–69Google Scholar; Guardian, Feb. 3, 1920. This speech apparently had a marked effect in swinging significant Irish support to Asquith in Paisley. There was great anxiety about how the three thousand Irish voters would lean. The local branch of the United Irish League came out for the Labour candidate, but the national headquarters held back, after Asquith's satisfactory pronouncements, causing great resentment in local Labour men. The general view was that Sinn Feiners would go Labour, and moderates would vote Asquith, . Guardian, Jan. 29, Feb. 4, 1920Google Scholar; Times, Feb. 2, 1920; Forward, Jan. 31, Feb. 7, 1920.
41. Asquith's conversion to woman suffrage was both late and reluctant, but he tried to be whole-hearted about it in public once it took place. His private opinions, acidly phrased in letters before and during the campaign, were decidedly hostile. Of Spen Valley, he said, “I have little doubt that these damned women voters are to blame.” At Paisley, he wrote that the women were an unaccountable element in the election; “dim, impenetrable … hopelessly ignorant in politics, credulous to the last degree, and flickering with gusts of sentiment like a candle in the wind.” Letters dated January 4 and 30, 1920, Asquith, , H. H. A.: Letters, I, 120-21, 124–26Google Scholar.
42. Asquith, , Paisley Policy, pp. 100–06Google Scholar; Guardian, Feb. 5, 1920.
43. Asquith, , Paisley Policy, pp. 131–38Google Scholar; Guardian, Feb. 9, 1920.
44. Asquith, , Paisley Policy, pp. 32–33Google Scholar.
45. Ibid., pp. 77-85; Guardian, Feb. 5, 1920. “The announcement made today,” the Guardian observed on Feb. 6, “that the Cabinet are to be pressed to summon an international financial conference has not been lost on the electors of Paisley, for it so happens that the calling of such a conference was one of the specific proposals made in Mr. Asquith's election [formal acceptance of nomination] address. It might not be a rash assumption that that document has been more than perfunctorily perused in Downing Street.”
46. Asquith, , Paisley Policy, pp. 107–12Google Scholar; Guardian, Feb. 10, 1920.
47. Ibid.
48. All of these remarks are drawn from Asquith, , Paisley Policy, pp. 86–99Google Scholar; Guardian, Feb. 7, 1920.
49. Ibid.
50. Asquith, , Paisley Policy, pp. 113–18Google Scholar; Guardian, Feb. 11, 1920.
51. It should be remembered, in all of the following, not only that Keynes, 's Economic Consequences of the Peace (London, 1919)Google Scholar had just made its sensational appearance a few weeks before the Paisley campaign, but that Keynes was an intimate of Asquith and had shown him the manuscript before publication. From early in the war, Keynes's biographer writes, “we find Keynes frequently staying for weekends with the McKennas or the Asquiths, and he appears to have been adopted by them quickly as an intimate. This was another kind of intellectual circle, and it was a brilliant one. … The Asquiths maintained a lively interest in the most modern literature and thought. … No longer was it necessary for Keynes to regard all politicians as people who talked in private life as though they were on a platform.” Harrod, R. F., The Life of John Maynard Keynes (New York, 1951), p. 211Google Scholar. See also pp. 171, 210-13, 255.
52. Asquith, , Paisley Policy, pp. 86–99Google Scholar; Guardian, Feb. 7, 1920. A powerful and much-disputed criticism of the entire Keynesian position on reparations and Germany has recently been made by Taylor, A. J. P. in The Origins of the World War (New York, 1963)Google Scholar. See especially pp. 22-62.
53. Asquith, , Paisley Policy, pp. 139–45Google Scholar; Guardian, Feb. 12, 1920.
54. Bernard Semmel has explained these matters with clarity and precision in his Imperialism and Social Reform: English Social-Imperial Thought, 1895-1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 23-24, 53–82Google Scholar. Also of much value is Halévy, , Imperialism and the Rise of Labour, pp. 99ff, 141Google Scholar.
55. Asquith, , Memories and Reflections, I, 134–36Google Scholar.
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58. Arthur Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., The Age of Roosevelt: the Politics of Upheaval (Boston, 1960), 220-30, 233, 236ff, 29lff, 387–401Google Scholar.
59. Harrod, , Life of Keynes, pp. 440–41Google Scholar.
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61. Ibid., pp. 150-53.
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69. Countess of Oxford and Asquith, , Off the Record (London, 1943), pp. 47–51Google Scholar.
70. Epstein, L. D., “British Class Consciousness and the Labour Party,” J.B.S., I (1962), 136–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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