Chapter 3 Locally arranged pacts

As the leaders attempted to define the relationship between the parties, both Conservative and Coalition Liberal candidates did what they could within their constituencies to maintain cross-party support. In Dundee, Churchill, handicapped by illness, and facing a particularly strong challenge from the socialists, issued an appeal that stressed that he would conduct his campaign so as to convince Conservatives that electing two Liberals for the city was in the best interests of the British Empire and stability at home.¹ Some coalition-minded Conservatives, imperilled by the same leftward drift of parts of the electorate, issued similar appeals. For example, in Glasgow Hillhead the Unionist MP Sir Robert Horne, chancellor of the exchequer from 1921 until the fall of the coalition, faced challenges from Labour and the Asquithian Liberals.² As one of the Chamberlain loyalists who had refused to accept Bonar Law’s offer of ministerial office, his was a potentially lonely fight and he made a public appeal to both Unionists and Liberals who believed in both party principle and co-operation as being in the national interest. Likewise, in the two-member Norwich constituency the Lloyd George Liberal Edward Hilton Young was willing to give a public promise of ‘qualified support’ to Bonar Law’s government as the price of persuading local Unionists not to run candidates against himself and George Robertson.³ At Ilkeston, Marshall Freeman, the Conservative candidate who had stood aside in 1918, to give General John Seely⁴ (armed with the coupon), a free run at the seat for the Coalition Liberals, wrote a letter to one of his supporters that was published in the local press:

If General Seeley is prepared to give assurances of support to Mr. Bonar Law, and the Prime Minister is content to accept the same, my appearance as an Independent Conservative candidate might have unfortunate results. On the other hand, having regard to General Seely’s expressed views on the Safeguarding of Industries Act and other topics, I imagine it may be somewhat difficult for him to promise unreserved support for the new ministry.⁵

In fact, by 1922 the policy positions of Seeley (a former Conservative MP) appeared increasingly difficult to define with any precision so that both Conservatives, Coalition Liberals and Asquithian Liberals had hopes for the veteran politician.

In London, also, the possibility of local party pacts was underpinned by the willingness of some Coalition Liberals to give promises of support to a future Conservative government under Bonar Law. As Chris Cook has noted: ‘In London, Macnamara in Camberwell North-West, as well as Arthur Lever in Hackney Central and Lt.-Col. M. Alexander in Southwark South East, received official Conservative support only after they had given specific pledges of support to a Bonar Law Ministry’.⁶ In Southwark South East the need for co-operation was especially pointed. In 1921 the seat had been captured by Labour candidate Thomas Naylor⁷ with a majority of 3,925 votes, but on a turnout of just 38.5 per cent and with the intervention of an Independent Conservative candidate. The Labour victory in 1921 had underlined the need for the parties to work together if they were to avoid the same eventuality at the 1922 General Election.

There were similar examples beyond London of Coalition Liberals being willing to give full or partial pledges of support to a potential future Bonar Law government. For example, there was a strong desire for continuing party co-operation underpinned by a pledge in the Forest of Dean which had been captured by Labour in 1918 with a majority of 3,966. Such was the strength of the Labour majority that in 1922 the Conservative Association was willing to continue standing aside after Winnifred Combe Tennant, the Coalition Liberal candidate, offered a limited pledge to ‘give a general support to Bonar Law [if after the election he was able to form a government] in all questions of today affecting Foreign Affairs’.⁸ The identification of foreign affairs as the principal focus of a pledge to Bonar Law seems to have been a reflection of local concerns that it was on matters of foreign policy where Lloyd George had so badly strayed from good sense, and the established practices of British government, and where co-operation ‘in the national interest’ was so urgently required. With a well-entrenched Labour candidate the local Association undoubtedly concluded that without a united anti-socialist vote the seat would again fall to Labour.

Continuing calls for Liberal-Conservative co-operation also came from some of those in the safest of Conservative seats. Sir Laming Worthington-Evans, the member for Colchester and former Secretary of State for War, who had declined to continue as a minister under Bonar Law, made a particularly forthright appeal for continued coalition on 26 October focussing press attention on his constituency and generating some controversy within it.⁹ In defence of the case for Conservative coalitionism he described himself as ‘a Tory, [who] has always been a Tory, and will remain a Tory to the end’.¹⁰ Strikingly, he drew a distinction between the terms Conservative and Tory, the latter of which he defined as ‘fixed, unbending invincible adherence to old, traditional, party principles’. The Times correspondent commented, in a display of that paper’s attitudes towards the split in Conservative ranks that Worthington-Evans in his speech came over as less Tory and more ‘Liberal-Conservative’ in his continued support for Lloyd George as ‘the greatest man in Europe’.¹¹ In a campaign in which many of the most ardent ‘Liberal-Conservatives’ were hedging their bets, or keeping their thoughts about the outcome of the election largely silent, the speech by Worthington-Evans was noteworthy for its passion, its prediction of continued coalition, and the tracing of division within the Conservative Party.

The Duke of Sutherland’s speech the following day, 27 October, at Carshalton in Mitcham, Surrey, was more typical in its gentle calls for co-operation, coupled with suggestions to all ‘Unionists and Conservatives to rally to the standard of Mr Bonar Law’.¹² In effect the calls for co-operation (and in effect for Liberals to back the Conservative candidate if Labour put forward a candidate in the constituency) found common cause with the politics of the speech being given by a Scottish Conservative. Evidence of the acceptability to the party hierarchy of calls for continued co-operation between Conservatives and Liberals was evidenced just four days later when the duke was appointed Under-Secretary of State for Air.

In practice, during the last week of October, it was apparent to both the leadership of the Conservative Party, to hopeful candidates, and others that a certain constructive ambiguity around the issue of coalition at the party level had its advantages. In areas where socialists were a threat to sitting Conservatives the idea of continued co-operation might head off the emergence of a Labour candidate. For example, following the Duke of Sutherland’s speech, no Labour candidate was forthcoming at Mitcham, and the sitting Conservative candidate would be returned. Robert Horne in Glasgow Hillhead similarly avoided a socialist challenge in 1922. Elsewhere, Conservative candidates challenged by Labour hopefuls could hope to secure some measure of Liberal support amidst the calls for continued co-operation. Bonar Law himself, at Glasgow Central, was to be one of the principal beneficiaries of this, as the pendulum began to swing against him. In Conservative stronghold seats expressing anti-coalition sentiment, and a detestation of the mercurial Lloyd George, this could serve to rally the Conservative faithful grown weary of coalition and a problematic prime minister. The election of 1922 really was a case of ‘horses for courses’ and their political jockeys could select their riding colours from a veritable palette of Tory blue and Coalition Liberal yellow blurring into each other to the point of a utilitarian camouflage political green. The attitude of the Conservative Party, and the Coalition Liberal Party in not defining their relationship too closely, was essential in this process. In 1922 the first rule of coalition was not to talk too openly about coalition except in seats where the threat of Labour was particularly marked. Yet, across the country, and largely irrespective of local circumstance, evidence could be found of the willingness of Conservative candidates to extend the hand to former coalition colleagues. Even in true blue Chelsea, Samuel Hoare, one of the prime movers behind the Carlton Club meeting, facing a solitary candidate in the form of Bertrand Russell (Labour), at least put in his election address a suggestion that the Conservatives were ‘ready to co-operate with all those who agree with us’.¹³

If working relationships were being negotiated between Conservatives and Coalition Liberals at the constituency and national levels then a similar process was taking place between Liberals of both hues in some of the metropolitan areas. While relationships between the party leaderships were simply too strained to permit immediate re-unification at the national level, at the local level some groups of Liberals were prepared to bury their differences in the interests of ‘Free Trade’ and unity against common enemies. In Manchester, a traditional bastion of Free Trade Liberalism, and Leeds (on the other side of the Pennines), together with Southampton, Liberal re-unification was substantially achieved before polling day. Liberals would not stand against Liberals and Liberal candidates would stand without particular affiliation to either Asquith or Lloyd George. In Leeds, for example, with two of the six constituencies held by Labour (Leeds North East and South East) it seemed likely that any division in Liberal ranks would lead to Labour breakthroughs. In Leeds South, Central and West the Coalition Liberal Candidate would contest the seats they had won as Lloyd George Liberals in 1918. Only in Leeds North did the candidate from 1918 not fight the seat in 1922, and that seems to have been down to his desire to stand down. Strikingly Lloyd George gave the appearance of having only limited knowledge about these Liberal reunions. In a speech on 4 November in which he took the platform with Austen Chamberlain and Sir Arthur Griffith Boscawen, he noted ‘there are pacts also, I believe between the two wings of the Liberal Party in some of the towns in the North – (A VOICE – “Manchester” – and Leeds, I believe)’.¹⁴ The extent to which different political parties were reaching out to each other was noteworthy but perhaps Lloyd George had no strong desire to focus attention on the deals that were emerging during the campaign.