EXIT LORD OXFORD

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 1, 3 January 1927, Page 3

EXIT LORD OXFORD

A GREAT CAREER

END OF A POLITICAL PARTNERSHIP

MR. LLOYD GEORGE'S FRIENDS

AND ENEMIES

Soon after the general strike of last May was called off the suggestion was thrown out that. English politics would bo profoundly affected by aii event which was without parallel in England's domestic history. Each of the three great parties has since been engaged in digesting the lessons taught by tho upheaval, and the conferences of tho Conservative and Labour parties at Scarborough and Margate wore completely dominated by them. Labour' met in a wiser and a sadder frame of mind than was shown in the early days of May,, states the London correspondent of tho Melbourne "Age." The most important decision registered at Margate was indeed a frank declaration that tho party would have, no more to do with unconstitutional shock, tactics, and must in future look to Par: liament to right her wrongs. The Tories at Scarborough, were cock-a-whoop, ami in a resolution not lacking in downrightness they demanded radical amendment of trade-union, law, as a protection for the public against any possible repetition of this year's midsummer madness. All. our troubles; will, according to these gentry, oe solved if a thoroughly stiff amendment of tho Trade Disputes Act 1906 makes mass picketing punishable, sets limits to the rights of peaceful persuasion, abolishes the political levy, and, abovo all, provides for a compulsory secret ballot before a strike can take effect. Tho diehards were in no-mood to listen to the reasoned objections to their fullblooded proposals which Sir Leslie Scott, M.P., and others at once raised, and they were frankly disappointed when tho Prime Minister himsek threw cold water upon them, declaring roundly that "you cannot smash the tradeunion system, and if you could it would be wrong.'' They extracted what comfort they could from his assurances that the Government was alive to the lessons of the strike, and recognised that something must be done to prevont its repetition. Rumour: has it that Lord Birkenhead, who a year or two ago codified, the law of property, is now engaged in the codification of trade-union law, and it may^ be taken for granted that ho will not be guided in any . amendments he drafts by the ill-digest-ed advice of the Scarborough hotheads. Thus the Labour and Conservative parties. But they aro in comparatively calm waters. They .are sure of their followings. It is the Liberals who are thrown into the most hopeless confusion by the strike, and the resignation of Lord Oxford and Asquith from I the leadership, which is directly traceable to it, has merely made confusion worse confounded. Tho Asquithians of the Liberal party saw the general'strike as a direct challenge to constitutional gov-' ernment, and.they plumped .solidly for the side of law and order. The Lloyd Georgians were inclined to temporise. Surely, they said, in effect, this was an occasion for taking a middle course.' In tho precious metaphor of the day they were to be tho bridge builders between the extremists on both sides, and were at tho same time to leave themselves free to la-sh the Labour leaders for a set of Woolly-headed bunglers, and the Government for a crew of stony-hearted tyrants. Mr. Lloyd George almost beyond doubt saw tho strike as a stepping ston.e to "office and to the leadership of his divided party. Events <■ rapidly falsified his prophecies as to tho duration and character of tho strike, but among those Liberals who from the very outset made a more sober estimate of the strike his disservico to the country in contributing an alarmist article to the American press was not to. bo readily forgiven; and when it became known that he had' declined the invitation of Lord Oxford to attend a me,ctin<* of the Liberal "Shadow Cabinet," and' had endeavoured unsuccessfully to start a newspaper of his own as a counterblast to the Government organ and to cut across the pronouncements of his s titular leader, everyone realised that a breach had been caused which could not bo healed. EXCOMMUNICATION. Soon after the strike ended Lord Oxford wrote his famous letter excommunicating Mr. Lloyd George, and for past three or four months the whole Liberal* party has been split from top to bottom. Valiant efforts have been made in the interval to. patch up a peace, but there was never tho slightest prospect of their success. Mr. Lloyd George, with his own huge party fund, did not find himself deserted in tha crisis. On the, contrary, much to the Chagrin of Lord Oxford, his letter of excommunication not only Jailed to isolate his rival, but served to show that numercxally his own following was inferior to that of Mr. Lloyd George. A handful of warm admirers and old colleagues of Lord Oxford, men like Lord Grey, Sir John Simon, Mr. Runcimau and other old loyalists, were equally unsuccessful in whipping up enthusiasm for their leade:: by their letter to him following a critical party meeting wnen heads wore counted in the House of Commons the pro-Lloyd George faction was found to be considerably stronger than tho Asquithians. Outside Westminster an equally lenient view was taken of Mr. Lloyd George's strike-poriod delinquencies. In the press the "Manchester Guardian" would have none of Lord Oxford's academic constitutionalism. The "Daily News" wobbled, but at length camo down more or less firmly on the .side of Mr. Lloyd George. Tho "Daily Chronicle," his own paper, was, of course, his stalwart supporter throughout. The "Westminster Gazette" alone of the leading Liberal papers refused to forsake the Oxford, standard. It was much tho same in the country generally. Mr. Lloyd George is too skilful a demagogue not to know that the public memory is short. Having the advantage over his opponent in the matter of sound health, he went forward with his platform campaign with a full equipment of loud speakers as if nothing had happened, and expounded his, land policy with scarcely a comment on the strike,'and never a reference to his share in it.' i'lio Liberal Candidates' Association, -.nth their eyes .on the next election, were in despair over the divisions among their leaders, and they made a last appeal for unity. Lord Oxford gavj them no immediato answer. A weel; or two elapsed, and in tho interval there was much conjecture as to whether he would unbend to embrace Mr. Lloyd George onco again, or would allow tho split to develop as best it could, or would actually resign the leadership. Mennwhilo Lord Oxford was studying the precedents, and, unhappily, Liberal dissensions in the past provided him with plenty of them. He found that Lord Rosebery's resignation was announced in a letter to the Chief Whip on the evo of a speech to Scottish Liberals in Edinburgh. His own would come on the eve of a similar meeting in Glasgow. It would be done with no less dignity than that shown by Sir William Harcourt, in which the circumstances afforded a close parallel. "A party rent by sectional dispu^s and personal interests/" wrote Harcourt to John Morleyy "is one which no man can consent to lead either with credit]

to himself or advantage to the country. . . . A disputed leadership besot by distracted sections and conflicting interests is an impossible situation." MODERN PUBLICITY. ' All the world knows that Lord Oxford has a syreme contempt for the modern publicity methods of politicians, but by a fortunate accident, which in the ease of any other statesman Might have been attributed to careful calculation, the resignation letter was released on the day following the publication of his two-volume work, "Fifty Tears of Parliament." Needless to say, tho book came in for a good deal more attention than it would otherwise have secured, for it is not the racy contribution to literature that Lady Oxford would have made it. "Be indiscreet," was the advice of Lord Morley to her ladyship when,she told him she was writing a diary, and who shall say that she did not act up to his advice. Her husband is discretion personified. In scholarly prose ho sets down almost objectively tie record of his long Parliamentary experience, and those who have .a taste for lively personalities will be disappointed if they search for them in this book. There is nothing here to indicate that his association with Mr. Lloyd George in particular had ever been other than friendly and indeed cordial. It is, 1 however, pretty well known that the leader of the party had little in common with the man who in 1918 was his undoing. The record in Lord Oxford's book stops abruptly with the war, so that the famous meeting at the Reform Club in 1916, at which, with .tears streaming from his eyes, Mr. Asquith, as he then was, learned that his chief lieutenant had ousted him from the Premiership, could not find a place in it.- But even tho earlier relationships between tho two men iire not hinted at. It is, however, pretty well known that there was little sympathy between ' them from tho beginning. Highbrows like Asquith, Haldane, and Morley extended to Mr. Lloyd George when ho was introduced into Sir Henry Campbell-Ban-nennan's Government, the same sort of superior indulgence as they did to Mr. John Burns. Yet. within a few years tho Asquith-Lloyd ' George partnership was to provj the most formidable political combination of modern ' times. "So long as these two work to-, gether,"^ said, that- shrewd judge of character, Sir Bufus Isaacs, now Lord Reading, "tn"e domination of the Liberal Party is secure for a generation." For ten years the. champion of Welsh I nonconformity ran in double harness with the Liberal Imperialist whom he had in earlier days attacked for his attitude over the Boer War. For tho first couple of years of office Mr. Asquith could afford to ignore his adversary of later times. But this admiration was awakened by the skill with which Mr. Lloyd George reconciled divergent interests in -his negotiations for creating .the Port of London Authority and for settling the 1907 railway strike. When in 1908 Mr. Asquith became Prime Minister, and the vacant Chancellorship was, on the advice of John Morley, offered to Mr. Lloyd George, few people realised how completely ttie two men would dominate the Cabinet. The deficiencies of tho one were supplied by the other.. While the heavyweight legislative work was being shaped by Mr. Asquith his Chancellor of the Exchequer was laying the foundations for the. measures of social amelioration with .which his name will' always be connected. ■ "WAIT AND SEE." ■Mr. Asquith may have.written every line of the Union of South Africa Constitution and brought Home Rule within measurable distance of the Statute Book. He may deserve all the credit for breaking the Houso of Lords veto and drafting the Parliament Act. But it was Mr. Lloyd Georgo who did the donkey work in the constituencies. The Old Age Pensions Act, the Insurance Act, and the other much debated taxes of the famous 1909 Budget were only part of tho output of Mr. Lloyd George. It was Mr. Lloyd George, too, who peered beneath the ermine rob%s of the Peers to discover them a set of rather dull and commonplace if ■ not stupid men. While Mr. Asquith was firm and dignified, his colleague was not at all distressed to hear noble lords with ample justification describo him as vulgar. The Duke of Marlborough in Mr. Lloyd George's phrase was merely "the first of the liiterl" The Duke of Abercorn, who called him a "damned little Welsh attorney," was branded as one of the "Hungry Hamiltons" who had always' swarmed over from Ireland to be jobbed into offices for which their intellectual capacities were inadequate. He "Limehoused" them all in turn. Tiresome stuff, but it went down with the mob. And when one election after another was won by the Liberals, Mr. Bonar Law, in despair, told a cheerless luncheon party in Newcastle that he saw little hope of the Conservatives ever again regaining office so long as the Lloyd George-Asquith partnership persisted. In those days it seemed impossible that it could ever be dismissed. But it is doubtful if even at that time there was much, love lost between the two men. If so, it did not survive the .earlior days of the war, and when the Asquiths after a long reign were driven out of No. 10, Downing street, the anti-Lloyd George feeling was running high throughout Liberalism. It is all very ancient history now. The shattered Liberal forces coalesced dramatically at Paisley; a couple of years ago, but it was ;an unsatisfactory union. Mr. Lloyd George did not part with his dowry as part of the bargain. He still has it, and when he has lived down, as ho will, the damaging effects of Asquith's resignation letter, with its implication that he favoured the general strike, Mr. Lloyd George will be in a strong position for succeeding to the leadership of the-party. The only alternatives, at preserit in sight are Sir Herbert Samuel, who is not in Parliament, Sir John Simon, who lacks personal magnetism,- . Lord Beauchamp, Lord Reading, and Lord Grey, who are almost out of the question because they are in the Upper House. Mr. Lloyd George can now afford to adopt his rival's slogan, "Wait and See." I