SIR ALEC DOUGLAS-HOME: SCOTS IN UK POLITICS (2)

Sir Alec Douglas-Home had a brief and undistinguished ministry in 1963-4 as Prime Minister of Britain wedged between that of Tory Harold MacMillan and Labour’s Harold Wilson. He did much better in his two periods as Foreign Secretary and his career sheds some light on the tortured history of Unionism in Scotland.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home

Early Political Experience and Inheritance

Alec Douglas-Home (1903-95) was the eldest son of the 13^th Earl of Home, a Scottish aristocratic family with estates in and around Coldstream, Berwickshire. Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, his most obvious talent was skill at cricket. Alec was influenced by the Unionist (Scottish Tory) intellectual Noel Skelton - an early advocate of a “property-owning democracy” - to enter parliament and Alec did so as member for Lanark in the National Government landslide of 1931, known then by his courtesy title Lord Dunglass. He became the modest Parliamentary Private Secretary to Skelton at the Scottish Office, learning the ropes of government, but moved upwards to be PPS to Neville Chamberlain in 1936, then Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Neville Chamberlain retained Dunglass as his PPS when he became Prime Minister in 1937 on Baldwin’s retirement. Dunglass was helpful to Chamberlain, who was a distant and unsociable character, by sedulously promoting his master’s policies and views to back-benchers. He accompanied Chamberlain to his fateful third meeting with Hitler in Munich in 1938, advising him against making grandiose claims: despite this, Chamberlain returned claiming “Peace in our Time” and waving his piece of paper signed by Hitler, all soon to be shown worthless.

Dunglass somehow avoided being tarred as a “man of Munich” as was for example Rab Butler, but always claimed Munich gave Britain a vital extra year to prepare for war. When war broke out Dunglass was soon diagnosed with a tubercular spine and was hospitalised for a lengthy period, reading voraciously and not returning to the Commons until 1943. He spoke from the back-benches on foreign affairs, particularly warning about Soviet ambitions, and sufficiently impressed his party to become briefly an undersecretary at the Foreign Office under Eden in Churchill’s caretaker government of 1945.

Dunglass lost his seat at Lanark when Labour swept into power in the1945 election. He surprisingly regained it in 1950 but his father died in 1951 and Dunglass became the 14^th Earl of Home with a seat in the House of Lords. One might have expected his political career to have effectively ended.

The Unionist Party of Scotland

The party which Dunglass, by some measure anachronistic, had represented in Parliament was becoming an anachronism itself although it reached its apogee in the 1955 election holding 36 of the 71 Scottish seats. The Unionists were in origin an alliance of the old minority Scottish Tories and those Liberals who opposed Home Rule for Ireland in 1886. They were enthusiasts for the integrity of the United Kingdom and Ireland and for the growth of the British Empire. The word “Conservative” was always avoided, as it was too English in its connotations while Scotland had a strong Liberal tradition. The Unionists were independent constitutionally but in practice took the Conservative whip at Westminster.

The Unionists were champions of Protestantism, gaining much support from Presbyterian Church of Scotland members and from working-class people fearful of losing their jobs to Irish immigrants. There was a sectarian aspect to Unionism including sympathy for the Orange Order. However by the 1950s and 1960s the Empire was visibly crumbling and religious passions were largely spent. The Unionists steadily lost seats, often to the SNP and Liberals. In 1967 the Unionists were absorbed by the Conservatives but Scotland was not enchanted by Heath, Thatcher or Major and Conservative support nose-dived leaving the party with a feeble single MP.

Leadership of the Unionists came from a very narrow social base, largely anglicised Episcopalian (the church of a small minority), upper class landowners. There was a thicket of toffs with double-barrelled names – Sir Colin Thornton-Kemsley, Sir Alick Buchanan-Smith, Patrick Wolridge-Gordon, Jock Bruce-Gardyne, clever but disreputable Sir Robert Boothby or Lady Tweedsmuir, whose idea of meeting the people of Aberdeen South was touring its housing estates in a slow-moving Rolls-Royce and waving a gloved hand to the plebs from the back seat! Too late, the Conservatives backed ordinary (if confrontational) candidates like Teddy Taylor. All this added to the off-putting toothy and chinless grouse-moor image of the Scottish Tories of which Sir Alec was a prize specimen.

Promotion to Cabinet and Foreign Secretary

Home however did not fade away in the House of Lords. He was appointed a Minister of State in the Scottish Office in 1951 serving under the powerful Unionist grandee James Stuart, a one-time serious suitor for Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, later George VI’s Queen and Mother of the present Queen. When Eden succeeded Churchill in 1955 Home entered the cabinet becoming Commonwealth Secretary and had to keep the organisation together after the sharp disagreements over Eden’s failed Suez invasion. MacMillan kept Home at the Commonwealth Office and when Lord Salisbury resigned in 1958 over the return from exile of Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus, Home added Salisbury’s portfolios to his own becoming Leader of the House of Lords and a central figure in the government. When in 1960, MacMillan wanted to appoint Selwyn Lloyd to the Exchequer, he broke an unwritten rule by appointing Home, a member of the unelected Lords, to the Foreign Secretaryship with Edward Heath deputising for foreign affairs in the Commons. Quite soon after, it became possible, after a campaign by Anthony Wedgwood Benn, for hereditary lords to renounce their peerages.

Home was Foreign Secretary for 3 years during the momentous period of the erection of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Crisis and the assassination of Kennedy. Britain was not a central player but Home was well-respected by Dean Rusk and by Andrei Gromyko, maintaining a wary view of the Soviets. He clashed sharply with his successor Iain Macleod at the Commonwealth Office whose African decolonisation policies Home thought too rapid.

Prime Minister

MacMillan’s government was struggling through the hilarious but damaging Profumo scandal in 1963 when MacMillan fell ill with prostate problems. Believing the problem to be worse than it was (he lived another 23 years), MacMillan resigned, throwing the Conservatives into a frantic leadership contest. The expected successor was the highly experienced but colourless Rab Butler; the other candidates were the younger Reginald Maudling, then a worthy but dull Chancellor, and rumbustious, self-publicising Lord Hailsham, then Tory Chairman, who electrified the party by announcing the renunciation of his peerage.

There was no election in those days, the Tory Leader “emerging” through some backstairs process of osmosis. To much astonishment the undeclared candidate Home was the choice and he became Prime Minister though two Cabinet ministers, Iain Macleod and Enoch Powell declined to serve under him, Macleod complaining of the “Magic Circle” which had supported Home.

Home had to renounce his earldom – his son David eventually became the 15^th Earl – and won a by-election as Sir Alec Douglas-Home to enter the Commons again. In the event his ministry was a stop-gap one. He passed a liberating Act ending Retail Price Maintenance and internally introduced elections for the choice of future Tory leaders. Sir Alec, with his skeletal face and half-moon spectacles was by no means telegenic and his good natured but unwise admission that he needed to move about a box of matches to understand economic problems probably did not impress the voters. An election in October1964 was inevitable and after his 11-month tenure Sir Alec did quite well only to lose the election to Wilson’s Labour by 4 seats. Sir Alec soon enough stepped down as Leader to be succeeded by an elected Edward Heath.

Foreign Secretary again

Sir Alec accepted the Shadow Foreign Secretary portfolio under Heath and took a strong line against UDI in Rhodesia, which became a running sore. He also supported Heath’s pro-EEC policy. To general surprise Heath won the 1970 election and Sir Alec returned to the Foreign Office. The UK duly joined the EEC in 1973: Sir Alec expelled 105 Soviet diplomats after the spying activities of the KGB became too blatant: the Rhodesian rebellion rumbled on without solution: Middle East tensions needed diplomatic effort. Sir Alec ran his ministry competently but when Heath lost the first election of 1974 Sir Alec resigned from parliament accepting a life peerage as Baron Home of the Hirsel (his stately home at Coldstream).

His legacy

Lord Home retired from politics, enjoyed fly-fishing on the Tweed, wrote his unrevealing memoirs and died at the ripe old age of 92 in 1995. It was not easy to dislike him: he was courteous and charming to all. He represented a past governing class which was becoming a curiosity; without his highly privileged birth it is not obvious where his life would have gone. No record remains of any bright idea, memorable phrase, ambitious project or beautiful object created by him. The same is surely true of many Britons, but they did not effortlessly rise to the office of Prime Minister of their nation.

The Hirsel, Sir Alec's ancestral home

 SMD

21.02.13

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2013

CB: SIR HENRY CAMPBELL- BANNERMAN; Scots in UK Politics (1)

[This is the first of a series of articles describing the distinctive contribution of Scotsmen to UK politics]

Scotland had a very different history to that of England until the Union of the Parliaments in 1707 but by the Victorian Age Scotland was well woven into the fabric of an extremely prosperous United Kingdom. Scotland was in the forefront of industrialisation; her brightest and best found appointments in government in London and in the burgeoning Empire; her physical splendours had been celebrated by Scott, Landseer and by the Queen herself while splendid opportunities in Parliament at Westminster beckoned.

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Prime Minister 1905-08

One Scot to hear this call was Henry Campbell (1836-1908), later Campbell-Bannerman. Henry was born into the purple of the Glasgow commercial classes, the second son of Sir James Campbell who had founded with his brother the warehousing, wholesale and retail drapery business of J & W Campbell in Ingram Street and prospered mightily, becoming Conservative Lord Provost of the city. Sir James lived in Bath Street but bought the estate of Stracathro, near Brechin in Angus, and Henry was partly brought up there. Henry attended Glasgow High School and Glasgow University (winning Greek prizes) and later Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was not a distinguished scholar. He was taken on extensive trips to France, Italy, Austria and Germany and spoke French fluently and knew much Italian and German.

Henry lived a life of high bourgeois ease in a large house with many servants. He became a partner in the family business in 1860 and married Charlotte Bruce that year but, although he drew a comfortable income, he left executive management to his elder brother, who in due course became a Tory MP. In 1868 Henry, who had unexpectedly converted to Liberalism at Cambridge, (“not through prayer and fasting” wryly observed Augustine Birrell later) duly entered Parliament as the MP for Stirling Burghs, then a safe Liberal seat. He was to flower as a great Liberal hero.

Three years on the back-benches and then he was appointed financial secretary at the War Office under the reforming Secretary Edward Cardwell. Fortune favoured him in other ways too; in 1871 a maternal uncle, Henry Bannerman, bequeathed him a life interest in the estate at Hunton, near Maidstone on condition that he adopted Bannerman in his name. This irritated our Henry but the property included a number of valuable farms and a large country house called Gennings, so he prudently pocketed his pride and changed his name to Henry Campbell-Bannerman, something of a mouthful: henceforth he became generally known as “CB”.

CB had 3 periods at the War Office under Gladstone and Rosebery, rising to Secretary of State. He won a reputation for common sense and conciliation, while echoing the Liberal principles of “Peace, Retrenchment and Reform”. Although the Navy was undoubtedly accountable to Parliament, the Monarch retained much influence over the Army and interfered in the details of commissions, uniforms, reorganisations and contractors. CB managed this deftly and finally persuaded the Queen’s cousin, George, Duke of Cambridge, a hidebound Crimean War veteran, to resign as Commander-in-Chief in 1895 after 39 years in that post. CB was knighted in 1895 for his services.

CB made more friends on all sides in Ireland, where he was briefly Chief Secretary in 1884-5, joining the Cabinet for the first time. Ireland was in agitated turmoil but CB’s bonhomie and calmness was admired in the run-up to the Home Rule debates. Typically, CB was more concerned about the state of the drains at his Dublin Lodge rather than the fear of assassination, although his secretary at the War Office had gifted a revolver to him.

The life of senior politicians was much less hectic then than now and CB was somewhat indolent even by the relaxed standards of his day. Parliament had lengthy recesses and ministers delegated much business to their departmental civil servants. CB liked to be in Scotland and had acquired a well-loved country house at Belmont, near Meigle in Angus. He spoke with an attractive Perthshire accent and his tastes in food were traditional. He described his ideal meal - “Mutton broth, fresh herring or salmon, haggis, roast mutton, grouse, apple tart, strawberries – maistly Scotch”. CB only drank a little whisky maintaining that “Claret is the wide-spread drink of Scotland”. He did a little shooting but was not guilty of golf or of taking exercise: it is perhaps no surprise that in later life both CB and his wife tipped the scales at more than 19 stone.

CB confessed, a little tongue-in-cheek, as Prime Minister in 1906: “Personally I am an immense believer in bed, in constantly keeping horizontal: the heart and everything else go slower, and the whole system is refreshed………” The first 5 months of the year saw the parliamentary session and thereafter CB usually decamped to Scotland, believing London society was unhealthy for a radical politician, though his wit and urbanity made him a most welcome guest. For 30 years he took a 6-week holiday, always at the Bohemian spa of Marienbad with a week or so in his beloved Paris. Many English people came to Marienbad but it did not become fashionable until Edward, Prince of Wales came in the late 1890s. CB also loved France, her food, her furniture and her literature; his wife spoke good French too.

The contrast with the hyper-active politicians of 2013 is striking; not for CB the endless interviews and constituency “surgeries” – CB was rarely seen in Stirling Burghs but this was not exceptional; he was well regarded by the burghers of Stirling and the labourers of Dunfermline. CB maintained a very large house in London at 6 Grosvenor Place, with some 20 servants and entertained generously. He had no children and few obligations. One imagines that with his establishments at Meigle, Maidstone and Grosvenor Place, he would not be an enthusiast for the “Mansion Tax” currently being promoted so noisily by his Lib-Dem successors!

With Mr Gladstone’s final retirement in 1894, the Liberals were led by the mercurial and imperialistic Lord Rosebery, who quarrelled with Sir William Harcourt, the Gladstonian Liberal leader in the Commons. Their differences became irreconcilable, the Tories returned, Rosebery and later Harcourt resigned their posts and faute de mieux the leadership of the Liberals in 1899 fell into the lap of CB. This least ambitious of politicians was now Leader of the Opposition.

He soon ran into a storm. The Boer War broke out in 1899 and the Liberals were split between the pro-Boers led by Lloyd George and the Liberal Imperialists including Rosebery and Asquith who favoured the war. CB trod a middle road, opposing the war in principle and seeking its end but urging support for the British army, which as a past Secretary for War he knew so well and greatly cherished. A “Khaki Election” in 1900 saw an easy Tory victory; with public opinion polarised, CB was insulted as a traitor when he denounced the “methods of barbarism” deployed against Boer civilians. CB kept steady to his policy and when the war ended in 1902 he had somehow saved his party from total oblivion.

With Arthur Balfour as Prime Minister, the Tories now made fatal mistakes. They unified the Liberals against a new Education Bill, proposed to apply duties and surrender fiscal sovereignty to a 10-nation sugar board (CB’s contrary views then echo Cameron’s now) but worse the Tories supported the Tariff Reform programme of maverick Joseph Chamberlain, anathema to all free-trading Liberals. The Tories were badly split on this issue.

It was clear that Balfour could not survive long and that CB would be asked to form a government. A plot was hatched against him by his gifted but power-hungry colleagues Asquith, Grey and Haldane known as “The Relugas Compact” after Grey’s Moray fishing lodge where they had assembled. Their plan was for CB to move to the Lords as a nominal Prime Minister but Asquith would take the substantive leadership in the Commons as Chancellor with the others gaining plum portfolios. CB faced down the conspirators, declined to budge and on becoming Prime Minister of a minority government in December 1905, promptly called a general election. The Relugas trio beat a hasty retreat, professing undying loyalty.

The 1906 Liberal election landslide under CB was a famous high-water mark in that party’s history. They gained 216 seats and with 397 members had an overall majority of 125. An electoral pact had allowed there to be some 30 Labour seats, a concession warmly supported by CB who sought greater working-class participation in parliament and who invited erstwhile trades union firebrand John Burns to his cabinet. The Relugas conspirators got their important portfolios but CB’s ascendancy was in no doubt. The framework had been set for the great Liberal ministry of 1906 to 1916, with its far-reaching constitutional, welfare and budgetary reforms.

CB’s career was coming to an end. Perhaps his last great service was the granting of self-government to the Boer Transvaal and Orange Free State. This was generous after their defeat only some 4 years before and laid the foundation of the Union of South Africa of 1910 and 50 years of mutual friendship between Briton and Afrikaner.

CB was now 69 and in 1907 became Father of the House. His beloved wife had died and his own heart was failing. In November he made his last public speech and in April 1908 resigned in favour of Asquith. CB died in Downing Street 19 days later. He was buried in the churchyard at Meigle.

There were more intellectually curious politicians than CB and some bolder in taking new initiatives. CB’s qualities were of a more human kind: Queen Victoria once described him as “couthie”, a Scots expression meaning friendly and homely. He was that but he was also shrewd and wordly-wise with a keen understanding of how differences could be bridged and personalities managed.  He served the British nation well and was a great credit to Scotland.

CB's statue in Stirling

SMD

18.02.13

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2013

HOMECOMINGS

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
'This is my own, my native land!'
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned,
From wandering on a foreign strand!

I have just returned from a misty-eyed trip from Athens to London to see my two sons there, combined with a filial excursion to my home town of Aberdeen in Scotland, where I have two brothers and some old friends. Both parts of the trip were delightful even in chilly January. Sir Walter’s famous lines echo down the years and I turn my thoughts to the nature of Homecomings, their pleasures and ambiguities.

I cannot rival the glamour of Odysseus whose return to Ithaca triumphantly liberated Penelope from her insistent suitors and back to the husbandly loins (though his dog Argos died!): nor was I transported in a sealed train as was Lenin from Switzerland to the Finland Station in Petrograd in 1917 “like a bacillus” in Churchill’s words. In fact, thanks to the generous discounts dished out by the taxpayer to the deserving Seniors, a first class 7-hour one-way train journey cost me a mere £33.60, with continuous free coffee, buns, sandwiches, booze and snacks, so you are certainly not treated like a bacillus.

The Brig o' Balgownie, Aberdeen

 An agreeable journey it is too. A glimpse of Ely in its sodden January fens, industrial Northern England, stately Durham Cathedral, the Tyne Bridge, Carlton Hill and the Scott Monument in Edinburgh, the Forth and Tay Bridges, Dundee with its lovely setting, the wide South Esk estuary at Montrose before journey’s end at granite-grey but highly prosperous, majestic Aberdeen. How many memories assail the returning Prodigal Son, how affectionate the welcome from kith and kin! Home, home at last!

Yet Home is an elusive concept. I have not lived in Aberdeen for 44 years and although the scenes are well-loved and familiar, they are not part of the life of my wife and family. My dear parents’ ashes are scattered there and we honour them; my ever-generous family entertain and pamper me; friends chatter and joke as of old. Aberdeen will always be at least one of my homes and for me it is a little slice of Paradise. But I have lived in London longer and still have a pied-à-terre there. I brought up my family in cosmopolitan North London; their attitudes are shaped by that experience. They love the excitement of the teeming streets, the dynamic business environment and the diversity of its life-style. Only a bigger and hopefully better city would entice them away. The chattering bistros, the convivial pubs, the many civilised places of resort draw me strongly to London too. I see myself as very much a London Scot, with a Home anchor in the England where I blossomed and prospered.

The Beer Garden, The Spaniards Inn, Hampstead

 My final Home is Greece. My lovely Greek wife inherited some property and we spend much time there. Greece is delightful and infuriating, corrupt yet physically safe, ill-governed but basically functioning. Three months of frigid and dismal winter gives way to nine months of gorgeous spring, summer and autumn when you bless being alive. I am an alien there without doubt and do not fully understand the Greek psyche though my clever wife and charmingly Hellenised middle son explain and instruct. We have fitful pleasures in historic, hectic Athens but I relax totally in our modest island home on Aegean Samos, sunning myself, feasting, exploring, swimming and writing. How much the warming sun raises your spirits, how infectious is Greek good humour!

A Swimming cove on Samos

                            

 Aberdeen and Scotland is thus my legacy Home, where my ancestral and youthful roots lie, where I easily wax sentimental. This sentimentality is sorely tested by Mr Salmond and his strident, damaging nationalism. In the coming independence referendum, I will be voteless; my objections to this are probably fairly enough countered: “If you love the place so much, why don’t you live there?” It is not to be, but Scotland naturally has a special place in my heart.

My family and professional Home is London (not forgetting 7 great years in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds) and England, that most civilised of nations. Recently I discovered a delectable London Stout, brewed in Greenwich and neatly called Meantime; it joins other fine ales like Theakston’s Old Peculier and Greene King’s The Old Speckled Hen to whet the parched whistle. Bliss!

My retirement Home is Athens and Samos in Greece. We sit out on our Samos balcony every summer evening, sipping ouzo and nibbling at feta, as the great ball of the sun dips under the horizon leaving a glorious sunset red-sky display. It seems somehow appropriate.

SMD

12.02.13

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2013