We have so many pre-conceptions about our political modernity that I thought it might be interesting to compare the administration of David Cameron in September 2011 with that of H H Asquith in September 1911, one hundred years ago.
H.H.Asquith David Cameron
I set out below a cabinet list of 18, all of Asquith’s and the principal personalities of Cameron’s. I have had to compress some portfolios as government priorities have changed.
1. Prime Minister H H Asquith David Cameron
2. Chancellor of Exchequer David Lloyd George George Osborne
3. Lord President Lord Morley Nick Clegg
4. Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey William Hague
5. Home Secretary Winston Churchill Theresa May
6. Defence Richard Haldane Liam Fox
7. Admiralty/Business Reginald McKenna Vince Cable
8. Ireland/ Cabinet Augustine Birrell Francis Maude
9. Local Government John Burns Eric Pickles
10. Privy Seal Lord Crewe Sir George Young
11. Education Walter Runciman Michael Gove
12. Justice Lord Loreburn Kenneth Clarke
13. Agriculture/Health Lord Carrington Andrew Lansley
14. Colonies/ Energy Lewis Harcourt Chris Huhne
15. Works / Pensions Lord Beauchamp Iain Duncan Smith
16. Lancaster Jack Pease Lord Strathclyde
17. Board of Trade/Treasury Sydney Buxton Danny Alexander
18. Scotland / PM Office Lord Pentland Oliver Letwin
My apologies go to Cameroon cabinet members and/or attendees (David Willetts, Lady Warsi, Owen Paterson, Michael Moore, Cheryl Gillan, Patrick McLoughlin, Caroline Spelman, Andrew Mitchell, Philip Hammond and Jeremy Hunt) for whom I could not provide an Asquithian counterpart.
The first factor striking the observer is the large number of Lords (7) in Asquith’s team as against only 2 – Strathclyde and Warsi – in Cameron’s. It was only in 1911 that the Parliament Act was passed, greatly clipping the powers of the Lords after a fierce struggle. The Lords have steadily declined since and may indeed disappear as constitutional reforms emerge. It has in truth taken a long time to deal with this historical anomaly.
Cameron’s cabinet has 4 women members/attendees of whom only Theresa May is senior. As women were first enfranchised in 1918, this may seem a modest proportion in a total group of 28. But we have already had the committed and transforming ministry of unforgettable Margaret Thatcher, so we know the highest office can be worthily held by a woman. Angela Merkel shows the way too in Germany although neither the US nor France has yet made this great leap forward.
There is something of a gap in the relative political experience of the two groups, especially at the highest level. Neither Cameron nor Osborne had held cabinet office before and only Kenneth Clarke could boast of office in 2 previous ministries. Young and Hague had been blooded late in Major’s regime. Asquith himself had been Home Secretary in Gladstone’s and Rosebery’s ministries (1892-5) and Chancellor of the Exchequer in Campbell-Bannerman’s (1905-8). Morley, Birrell, Crewe and Loreburn had long experience while Lloyd George was a well-known public figure as an outspoken opponent of the Boer War. These comparisons may be unfair in that Cameron’s team is younger and we have the benefit of being able to evaluate Asquith’s team in hindsight as historic figures.
The social composition of both groups of 18 is instructive. Asquith’s cabinet included 3 Etonians (Harcourt, Carrington and Beauchamp), the same as Cameron’s top group (Cameron, Young and Letwin), and other top schools like Westminster, Harrow and Winchester are evenly spread. Only Asquith’s cabinet included a member (John Burns) of working-class origin and occupation – he had been a militant docker and trades unionist in Battersea. Liam Fox had been brought up in a council house and he, William Hague, Danny Alexander, Iain Duncan Smith and Eric Pickles were educated in the state system – as Lloyd George had been. There is a strong flavour of the aspirational middle class in Cameron’s team (Pickles, Gove, Fox, Alexander, Duncan Smith, Hague, May, Cable, Lansley and Clarke) which is absent from Asquith’s.
Asquith’s team included several with moneyed or aristocratic connections (Runciman, Crewe, Grey, Pease, Churchill, McKenna and Beauchamp) while this is less true of Cameron’s (Cameron himself, Osborne, Clegg, Strathclyde and Young). Until 1911 MPs were unpaid (from 1911 £400pa) and ministerial salaries only came in 1937. So MPs had to have a second occupation, a private income or a generous sponsor. There was no conception then of the salaried “professional” politician (current basic £65,738 pa) with generous expenses allowances.
Most members of both groups went to university although Lloyd George and Burns did not and Churchill, like Duncan Smith, finished his education at Sandhurst. Eric Pickles went to Leeds Polytechnic, Lansley to Exeter, Strathclyde to East Anglia, Fox to Glasgow and Asquith’s Haldane went to Edinburgh and Gottingen. All the rest went to Oxbridge and often made their initial reputations there (4 being presidents of their Unions – Asquith, Clarke, Hague and Gove). Indeed Asquith is credited with coining a famous phrase when he praised “that ineffable air of effortless superiority which so distinguishes a Balliol man”
With tertiary education went literary interests. Morley wrote on Burke, Cromwell and Walpole but is most famous for his fine biography of his old chief Gladstone, although he had no empathy with Gladstone’s evangelism. Similarly William Hague found Wilberforce’s religiosity unsympathetic in his biography and was more comfortable with his estimable portrait of the Younger Pitt. Haldane wrote on German philosophy and Birrell was a consummate essayist. Churchill’s oratorical gifts were already recognised while his wonderful literary ones did not flower until some years later. He knew he was someone special, remarking to Asquith’s daughter Violet “We are all worms: but I do believe that I am a glow-worm!”
Nick Clegg, once a journalist, is a prolific writer on the issues of the day, Vince Cable has produced books on economics and trade, Gove wrote a biography of the nearly-man Michael Portillo, Chris Huhne has also pronounced on economic matters and Letwin, son of two academics, has written more generally on ethics. The most prominent intellectual in the Cameron team, but not in our top 18, is probably David “Two-Brains” Willetts writing an ideological book on Civic Conservatism. The perhaps surprising conclusion is that Cameron’s men are probably every bit as literate as Asquith’s.
The personal integrity of both groups is not without blemish. Asquith’s peccadilloes were minor: he was nicknamed “Squiffy” for his alleged fondness for drink. In 1912-13 Lloyd George became embroiled in the Marconi affair, where there was speculation in the shares of Marconi fed by inside knowledge that a lucrative contract was about to be signed with the British government. Lloyd George was lucky to survive this and much later he so brazenly abused the honours system from 1919 onwards by selling titles, as his predecessors had done more discreetly, that the law had to be changed. His numerous infidelities would have provided endless copy for today’s red-top newspapers.
“Loulou” Harcourt was a restless homosexual and fear of exposure led him sadly to suicide in 1922. Lord Beauchamp, said to be the model for Waugh’s Lord Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited, fled the country in the early 1930’s for similar reasons. At least Britain is thankfully a more tolerant country now. Many of Cameron’s team have been touched by the 2009 parliamentary expenses scandal, but otherwise no huge skeletons seem to be rattling around in the cupboard, though future historians may disabuse us.
If some of Asquith’s cabinet did not scintillate at Westminster, the wider world and Empire provided other opportunities. McKenna was later a successful Chancellor but left politics to chair the Midland Bank, building it up to be then the largest British bank. Runciman remained in public life and embarked on an ill-fated mission on the Sudetenland in 1938. Lord Carrington retired as the Marquess of Lincoln, while Lord Pentland became Governor of Madras and Jack Pease, as Lord Gainsford, was appointed chairman of the BBC. Sydney Buxton was a well-regarded Governor-General of South Africa. Even the Liberal Establishment looked after its own.
Did these cabinets face completely different problems? Women’s suffrage is no longer an issue and the long, painful saga of Ireland seems to be quite recently settled for a generation. Asquith’s greatest battle had been the Parliament Act and this had been won by 1911 – the primacy of the Commons was never again challenged, but constitutional reform, devolution and an elected upper chamber are still on the agenda. Asquith faced no economic crisis or deficit reduction problem – Britain was the pre-eminently prosperous great power although Germany and the United States were catching up fast.
Defence was a great issue. Energetic Haldane, later to be Labour’s first Lord Chancellor, had reformed the services, appointing the first CIGS and readying an Expeditionary Force. Liam Fox also has to reshape the services, hugely reduced since Asquith’s day. There was a split between the Liberal Imperialists and the Little Englanders, not unlike that between the Tory Eurosceptics and Europhiles.
Winston Churchill Michael Gove
The Imperialists won the struggle eventually and Britain became increasingly enmeshed in European alliances: Grey played his cards badly and Asquith’s government (only Morley and Burns resigning) entered the Great War which was to have such a tragic effect on European civilisation. Dynamic Lloyd George led the country brilliantly to victory but if Asquith’s ministry had a rising star, it certainly was Winston Churchill, whose erratic career culminated in him being the unchallenged saviour of the nation during the Second World War.
The Eurosceptic and Europhile debate and Britains’s absence from the Eurozone has some echoes of the 1911 controversy. Many believe Britain’s destiny lies outside Europe, maybe in the English-speaking world and if, in a bold step to save the euro, Germany decides to move to fiscal union and establishes its hegemony over Europe, so be it. Others say Britain’s future lies in closer integration and commitment to the European project.
It is much too early to pass judgement on Cameron’s coalition cabinet. A Headmaster’s Report would surely say that, after a good start, there was still much more to do. In our time the great unfinished domestic business is the management of the economy so that Education and Welfare is of a quality the people want and can afford. If a future star can now be identified, my money would be on clear-thinking and pragmatic Michael Gove – a fellow Aberdonian – although such a prediction is often the kiss of death.
Both cabinets were full of able people from the educated elite, civilised, conscientious, passionate in some causes, grappling with complex problems with varying success. The carousel of politics spins round remorselessly. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
SMD
1.09.11
Text Copyright: Sidney Donald 2011
