Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [242]
In June, 1907, Campbell-Bannerman told the Commons that the time had come to challenge the pretensions of the peers, supported as they were by Mr. Balfour, “at the winding of whose horn the portcullis of the House of Lords comes rapidly down.” Lloyd George’s choice of metaphor was equally picturesque. The House of Lords, he said, was not the watchdog of the Constitution but “Mr. Balfour’s poodle.” C.-B. moved a resolution stating that in order to give effect to the “will of the people, the power of the other House to alter or reject Bills passed by this House must be restricted by law” so that, within the lifetime of any one Parliament, the final decision of the Commons should prevail. The Labour party immediately offered an amendment proposing to abolish the House of Lords altogether. In introducing a resolution rather than a bill, the Government’s purpose was clearly propaganda rather than action and after the resolution was adopted—without the Labour amendment—nothing further was done.
That summer the Second Hague Conference assembled. In April of the following year, 1908, C.-B., expecting death, resigned and died within a month. Succeeding to the premiership Asquith remodeled the Cabinet more nearly in his own image. Four of a very able group of under-secretaries were promoted to Cabinet rank, among them Walter Runciman, son of a wealthy shipowner, Herbert Samuel, son of a Jewish banking family and like Asquith a First at Balliol, and Reginald McKenna, son of a London civil servant who had taken a superior degree in mathematics at Cambridge. His appointment as First Lord of the Admiralty in place of Lord Tweedmouth prompted Morley to recall that when he had proposed a certain name to Gladstone for that post in 1892, Gladstone with great solemnity and a wave of his hand said, “Well, for the Admiralty I think we require what is called a gentleman!” And “Here we are,” sighed Lord Esher, looking over the new Cabinet, “overwhelmed by the middle classes.”
The most important change in the Cabinet was Lloyd George’s promotion to fill Asquith’s place as Chancellor of the Exchequer while his own vacated place as President of the Board of Trade was filled by Winston Churchill, fourth of the under-secretaries to be promoted. Churchill’s career almost ended at this point when he had to fight a by-election at Manchester owing to a custom then in force which obliged an M.P. raised to Cabinet rank to have his seat confirmed by the electorate. In a hard contest, harassed by Suffragettes, Churchill lost, to the screaming delight of the Tory press. His defeat proved that the balance was already swinging back from the abnormal Liberal victory of 1906 and it made more urgent the Liberals’ need of the labour vote. At Dundee, where Churchill was immediately offered another seat, he insisted that only with the workers’ support could the Liberals have the strength to put their legislation through the House of Lords against the growing forces of Tory reaction. “With your support we shall overwhelm them.… Ah, but we must have that support.”
As it proved, none of the social legislation carried through by the energetic team of Lloyd George and Churchill was blocked by the House of Lords. A Coal Mines Act establishing the eight-hour day for miners, a Trade Boards Act establishing minimum wages for piecework in the sweated trades, a Workman’s Compensation Act establishing employers’ liability for industrial accidents and the Old Age Pensions Act were passed and the team began work on the National Insurance Bill for unemployment and health insurance which was to be the crown of the Liberals’ welfare legislation. None was obstructed by the House of Lords for the same reason that the Trade Disputes Act had not been. The oncoming conflict with the Commons, however, was not diverted.
All the challenges, resistances and emotions of the conflict were stuffed like gun-cotton into a new piece of legislation,