Andrew Bonar Law
(1858-1923) was only Prime Minister of Britain for 211 days in 1922-3 and
has often been dubbed “The Unknown Prime Minister”. Yet Law was Leader of the
Conservative Party for 12 years in the momentous 1911-1921 period, returning
finally in 1922-23. Much less colourful than Lloyd George, Asquith or Churchill,
he was astute and focussed and had the merit, rare in politicians, of being
trusted as honest and valued for his straight talking.
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| Andrew Bonar Law |
Bonar Law was born in the Colony of New Brunswick, which
joined federal Canada in 1867. His Scots-Irish father was a Free Church of
Scotland minister, who also had a small farm. He had a hard and very rural
upbringing; his Scots mother died when he was two and for ten years he was
looked after with his four siblings by her sister, his aunt Janet. Janet
decided in 1870 to return to her native Helensburgh, near Glasgow, and it was
agreed that Bonar would come with her. Bonar went to Glasgow High School, where
his prodigious memory was noticed, but left aged 16.
His aunt’s family, the Kidstons, were quietly prosperous,
owning a small merchant bank where Bonar worked briefly. It was sold to the
Clydesdale Bank but the Kidstons generously bought Bonar a partnership in an
iron works. The senior partner suddenly retired and in his 20s Bonar managed
the business and it prospered greatly. Glasgow was in those days a centre for
iron-trading, just as Bradford was for wool and Manchester for cotton. Bonar
became an accomplished businessman: he improved his education by attending
lectures at Glasgow University and joining its debating society which copied
the Westminster parliamentary model; his controversial skills burgeoned. He
also developed his expertise in chess, a lifelong enthusiasm. Bonar married
merchant’s daughter Annie Robley in 1891 and they were to have seven children.
Bonar was rich enough (MPs were then unpaid) to become a
sleeping partner in the iron business and in 1897 was adopted as the Tory
candidate for Glasgow Blackfriars. He won the seat unexpectedly in the 1900
Boer War election and soon made his mark, joining the front benches in 1902.
Balfour was Prime Minister but the leading personality was Colonial Secretary
and Imperialist Joseph Chamberlain, leader of the Tory-supporting Liberal
Unionists, who won over Bonar to two
policies which became central pillars of his politics – Tariff Reform and opposition
to Irish Home Rule.
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| Dynamic Joe Chamberlain |
We tend to forget how passionately the Tariff Reform issue
was fought in this era. It split the Tory party, between those opposed to food
taxes and others who came to advocate Empire free trade. Law was more measured;
his enthusiasm for tariff reform was based on the belief that it would protect
employment in Britain. Free trade had been the watchword of the Liberals ever
since Cobden and Bright agitated against the Corn Laws in the 1840s. The tariff reform campaign lost much momentum
when Joe Chamberlain was crippled by a stroke in 1906 and left public life; his
elder son Austen Chamberlain did not have his father’s fire in his belly - it
was wittily said: “He always played the game, and always lost.”
Bonar Law was more animated by opposition to Irish Home
Rule. His father remarried in Canada and later returned to live in the Co. Down
of his ancestors. Law led the Tories to oppose Irish Home Rule by using its
built-in majority in the Lords. After the Parliament Act of 1911 limited the
Lords’ ability to merely delaying legislation, Law played a dangerous game with
Carson and FE Smith (later Lord Birkenhead) in sowing a mutinous spirit within
the Army to suppressing opposition from Ulster Unionists. The eventual
exclusion of Ulster from the Act creating the Irish Free State was in part a
legacy of Law.
After the Liberal landslide of 1906, bringing in the
governments of Campbell-Bannerman and then Asquith, the Tories were in
opposition and only slowly revived. Their struggle against the Peoples’ Budget
and the Parliament Act failed and in 1911 Balfour resigned a Leader. The two
leading contenders Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain cancelled one another out
and the party rallied round Bonar Law as the compromise candidate.
Bonar was a very effective debater, concentrating on the
narrow issue of the motion and seldom thinking laterally. Perhaps this was a
limitation. In any event he placed the highest importance on party unity. He
allowed the “big beasts” of the party, Birkenhead, Curzon and the maverick
Churchill, to roam unrestrained but Law kept party discipline and had a mastery
of the Commons. He supported the Great War loyally and joined in Coalition with
Asquith in 1915, accepting the modest cabinet portfolio of Colonial Secretary. Asquith
considered Law his social inferior and Law would shrug his shoulders and agree;
Asquith went in for high literature and poetry-reading. Bonar enjoyed reading
detective and mystery stories. When Asquith finally fell in 1916, Law could in
theory claim the top position but he recognised the superior talents of Lloyd
George and he worked constructively with him in the Coalition. This time Bonar
became Chancellor of the Exchequer with a seat in the war cabinet and was in
effect second in command.
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| Lloyd George, "The Welsh Wizard" |
Bonar’s alliance with Lloyd George was very productive.
Bonar concentrated on domestic matters and in the remarkably successful
financing of the War (although borrowings rocketed, Britain financed 26% of its
expenditure through taxation, much more than other belligerents). Lloyd George
only rarely attended the Commons and Bonar organised the Coalition supporters.
After two budgets he relinquished the Exchequer to Sir Robert Horne and became
Lord Privy Seal. He still led the Commons and chaired the cabinet when Lloyd
George was heavily engaged in the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference. In 1921
Bonar had some kind of breakdown and retired from politics – taking a rest cure
on the Riviera.
Like most Conservatives, Bonar admired but did not wholly
trust Lloyd George. Britain was war-weary and Lloyd George alarmed his allies
by taking an aggressive line against resurgent Turkey: the Chanak Incident saw
Lloyd George having to back down. The Tory backbenchers wanted to put an end to
the Coalition. Bonar caught this mood and returned rejuvenated from his short
retirement. At a famous meeting at the Carlton Club in October 1922, the Tories
voted 187-87 to abandon Lloyd George and fight an election in their own
colours. Bonar’s support was crucial although Baldwin was the ringleader and
made the better speech.
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| Intriguer Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook |
The Tories duly won the subsequent election, Bonar’s government was castigated as the “Second Eleven”.
Stanley Baldwin was second in command, Curzon a grandiose Foreign Secretary and
surprisingly, given his obscurity, a place was found for Neville Chamberlain
(Austen’s half-brother), later to be an effective domestic minister and disastrous
Premier. Not much was achieved: the Irish Treaty was ratified but the South
slid into vicious civil war. Baldwin came back from Washington with an onerous
repayment deal on the American war loans: an angry Bonar remonstrated but
eventually swallowed the terms. The French occupied the Ruhr to squeeze out
German reparations, to general dismay.
Bonar’s days were numbered: he had to abandon a recuperative
cruise; an urgent consultation in Paris diagnosed inoperable throat cancer.
Bonar resigned as prime minister in May 1923 and died in October. He was buried
at Westminster Abbey.
It is true that Bonar had a rather hang-dog look about him
and was inclined to be depressive. His wife died at the early age of 43 in 1909
and he lost two sons killed in action during the War. He was a teetotaller and
after too much rural solitude in his boyhood, disliked the beauties of nature.
His vice was excessive smoking, always anticipating the next cigar and his
clothes smelled of tobacco. He had little small-talk and took politics
seriously. In his last eight years he became a close friend of Max Aitken,
later Lord Beaverbrook. Aitken was Canadian, indeed a son of the manse and
adopted New Brunswicker, but apart from that they had little in common. Aitken
was a very rich newspaper mogul, given to intrigue and mischief-making among
his political friends and held office under Lloyd George. He was a ribald
high-liver: it is said Bonar listened to but seldom took Max’s advice, but his
friendship must have been warming.
Roy Jenkins thought Bonar was the “Sad Prime Minister” while
Alan Clark dismissed him as “a nonentity”. This was unfair and I prefer his
successor Stanley Baldwin’s publically expressed verdict: “a most lovable,
elusive and wistful personality” and his private admission “I loved the man”. I
reckon Bonar did pretty well and brought honour to his Scots ancestry and to
British public life.
SMD
23.06.13
Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2013
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