Chapter 4 ‘There is no Pact – But’

If politically it was difficult for the party leaders in the aftermath of the Carlton Club meeting to discuss the possibility of a future coalition, or the strategic logic of a pact between the Conservative and Lloyd George Liberals, then it did not prevent the parties at the local level from making their own arrangements. In areas such as Scotland and Lancashire these were overt, to the exasperation of some in the Conservative ranks. In the early days of the election the special correspondent of The Times reporting on the visit of Bonar Law to Scotland expressed his exasperation: ‘Definite arrangements have been made in regard to practically every constituency that there be no rivalry. Such a policy means nothing more nor less than coalition at the election as well as co-operation afterwards’.¹ As the Western Daily Press declared on 30 October: ‘There is no Pact – But’.² The Daily Mirror was less coy, running the headline: ‘The “Don’t-Know-Where-We-Are” Election Maze: Nation Bewildered by Sharing of Seats by Parties Who Deny “Coupon Pact”’.³ Meanwhile, the Daily Mail on 30 October carried a cartoon of a grave with the caption ‘Coalition’s Body Lies a Mouldering in the Grave – But its Soul Goes Marching On’, complete with a figure marching out of the grave in the direction of a signpost pointing to ‘The Constituencies’.⁴

The rumours that a secret pact at the national level was in existence were so extensive that Sir George Younger had to issue a statement that ‘No Pact of any kind exists’.⁵ What was noticed on many sides, though, and what mystified many Coalition Liberal activists, was the former prime minister’s complete lack of enthusiasm for attacking the Conservatives and responding to local challenges to sitting Coalition Liberals. As The Times noted: ‘A good many National Liberals are astonished at the meekness with which Mr Lloyd George has suffered these assaults on seats that National Liberals have held’.⁶ To many observers the evidence for the existence of a pact seemed obvious.

This was further underpinned throughout the campaign by press reports that supported the idea that ordinary voters had much to fear from the revolutionary socialism of the Labour Party, its union backers, and from the Communist International which exercised influence over the left in Britain. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph on the day before polling was particularly blunt with a report headed ‘Lenin watching Britain – “Soviet’s” Hopes based on Labour’s Chances – “Reds” Come out into the Open’.⁷ The report was supported on the same page by an account of how Winston Churchill had been shouted down by ‘Reds’ at Dundee and an appeal to women voters to ‘Crush the menace’ of Socialism.⁸

As Laura Beers has demonstrated in her work on electoral betting in interwar Britain, investors in October-November 1922 were concerned at the likelihood of a hung Parliament, and a further election in 1923 which might deliver a Labour government: ‘In the run-up to the November 1922 election … insurers were selling policies to indemnify investors not only against the possibility of a Labour victory … but against the possibility of a second general election returning a Labour government before February 1923’.⁹ The Red Scare of 1922 was a reminder of the socialist threat in particular constituencies, and the overall emergence of Labour as a potential party of government. ‘Co-operation’ to forestall the progress of socialism made obvious sense.

Many Conservatives and Asquithians were appalled at what they saw as the attempt to secure coalition by the back door. On 27 October Asquith launched into an attack:

Mr Asquith in the course of his address to an enthusiastic audience at Peterborough yesterday advanced the contention that the ‘co-operation’ of which so much is heard nowadays is only another equivalent for the out of fashion term ‘Coalition’ … It must be admitted that the future relationship of the Conservatives under Mr. Bonar Law and the National Liberals led by Mr Lloyd George is not easy to state with any certainty, and the position in certain constituencies where local arrangements have been arrived at is still more puzzling. Yesterday from London came a report that ‘the suggestion that a compact has been entered into between Unionists and Coalition Liberals was emphatically denied to-day at the Conservative headquarters.’ Mr Law’s speech at Glasgow contained a passage much to the same effect. According to this the new firm has no connection with the old, although some of the partners in the original combination have crossed over to take seats on the reconstructed board of directors.¹⁰

While most Asquithians could do little but cry foul, there were those within Conservative ranks prepared to take a more direct approach. The question was whether their intervention could spark a wider reaction within the Conservative Party against the party truce.

The evolution of Conservative Party policy after the Carlton Club meeting, and the unofficial truce with the Coalition Liberals, was much to the distaste of Lord Beaverbrook, the pro-tariff newspaper baron and long-time friend of Bonar Law. Beaverbrook had been pivotal to the breakaway of the Conservatives from the coalition as Samuel Hoare noted: ‘Throughout the October crisis Beaverbrook’s was the advice that chiefly counted with his friend. It was confident when Bonar Law was doubting, and concrete and practical when Bonar Law was brooding moodily over the fire in a state of … inaction’.¹¹ Beaverbrook’s flagship Daily Express had publicly encouraged the party to break away from the coalition and was thunderous in its endorsement of Conservatism. It promised its readers on 23 October:

(1.) A Conservative Government would mean the end of a policy of foreign adventure, which has cost us millions, brought us nothing, and nearly plunged us into a wanton war. The Government would stand pledged to clear out of Constantinople, Mesopotamia, and Palestine.

(2.) This would leave Conservatism free to obey its natural instincts and look after its own people first. It would develop our home industries and imperial markets, and so decrease unemployment and launch us on the path of returning prosperity.

(3.) Mr Bonar Law can be trusted to pursue a safe and saving course at home as well as abroad. There would be an end of those ambitious schemes which cost millions, tax industry, depress credit and end in a financial fiasco.

(4.) Conservatism stands for the liberty and harmless enjoyment of the subject. It does not love kill-joys or restrictive laws.¹²

With Bonar Law at the helm Beaverbrook was certain that the new government would deliver on the policies advocated by the Express. However, Beaverbrook felt deeply let down when Bonar Law informed him, shortly after the general election campaign had begun, that the group of senior Conservatives (including Curzon and Derby) called together to frame policy for the election had advised against campaigning on a platform of tariff reform. Beaverbrook was aghast. He later described it as a ‘disaster’.¹³ That Bonar Law informed Beaverbrook that it was the decision of this inner group speaks volumes about how the new prime minister regarded the likely reaction of the newspaperman to policy for the forthcoming election. This did not prevent Beaverbrook from writing an extensive piece for The Daily Mirror, in a ‘Grand Bonar Law Number’, in which the newspaperman gave fulsome praise to the Conservative leader. Bonar Law was described as the ‘Most Likeable of Men’ and ‘Something Different’ and someone on whom the electorate could rely.¹⁴ Whatever their private differences, in public the relationship was presented as being most harmonious.

As the campaign took shape, and it appeared that party pacts would be maintained in many areas Beaverbrook grew increasingly angry at what he perceived as the willingness of the Conservative leadership to accept that the likely outcome of the election would be coalition in some new form. As he later wrote in The Decline and Fall of Lloyd George published in the 1960s: ‘It was a case of the old Coalition all over again under a new name … The old bad policies would be continued. The sins of Mr. Lloyd George and his colleagues would be visited on Bonar Law and the new Administration’.¹⁵ In Beaverbrook’s thinking the Labour Party and Asquithian Liberals would very quickly be able to re-ignite feelings against the coalition with the Conservative Party catching most of the blame for the new/old arrangement. As a result, he set out to destabilise the relationship between the former coalition partners. Informing Sir George Younger, Beaverbrook sought to put forward candidates against sitting National Liberals and in others he paid the election expenses of candidates where constituency associations were ready to put forward their own nominees. In The Decline and Fall of Lloyd George Beaverbrook details his actions without identifying the constituencies where he attempted to intervene.¹⁶ Beaverbrook was a man much given to maximising his own importance.

A comparison between the initial survey of expected nominees carried out by The Times on 27 October, and those appearing on the ballot paper in 1922 does suggest that only a small number of Independent Conservatives came forward to contest the 1922 election (a maximum of twenty), and the majority of these were clearly not Beaverbrook candidates (a likely maximum of three).¹⁷ For example, in Westminster St George’s the seat was eventually won by the sitting MP James Erskine as an Independent Conservative. He had initially been elected in a 1921 by-election as an Anti-Waste candidate but by 1922 the Anti-Waste campaign was all but over and a fresh label was required. The labels independent Unionist and Conservative and Anti-Waste were used interchangeably to describe Erskine’s candidature. Beaverbrook’s desire for ‘scuttle’ in the Middle East meant there was some policy alignment between his goals and the policy favoured by the Anti-Waste movement, but there is no evidence that Erskine’s campaign was under-written by the Canadian newspaper baron.¹⁸ If Beaverbrook did put money into a larger number of candidates then he wasted his money. Only three Independent Conservatives would be elected, and only in East Dorset can we see clear evidence of Beaverbrook’s hand.

This is not to rule out the possibility that Beaverbrook’s actions did not serve as encouragement to a number of Conservative Associations to bring forth their own ‘official’ candidates that then received Central Office backing. Some of these may initially have been Independent Conservative candidates subsequently adopted by the Association. The sources do not allow the figures to be established with any certainty but what we can see is that between 27 October and 6 November a small but potentially significant number of Conservative nominees were added to the poll that caused some panic in Coalition Liberal ranks. Across Scotland the truce between the parties held good with just two interventions across seventy seats. In the fifty-nine London seats only in Bermondsey West and Bethnal Green North East did two Conservatives (one of whom was an Independent Conservative) come forward between the two dates to raise the prospect of a wider assault against the Coalition Liberals. Likewise in the English Counties only around ten Conservatives (official and independent) came forward to be added to the ballot paper between 27 October and 6 November and some of this was no doubt local associations taking their time with the process. In Wales, however, something more significant was taking place. In five of the twety-four Welsh seats Unionist candidates were nominated in the lead up to the close of nominations. Those five seats (Camarthen, Denbigh, Wrexham, Flintshire and Aberavon were considered likely to return Coalition Liberal Candidates and, in the event, the intervention of Unionists would cause two of those seats to fall to Labour including Aberavon to future Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. This late Unionist assault on the bastion of Lloyd George Liberalism suggested both co-ordination and a sign that the party truce might break down altogether with local associations, given moral encouragement from Beaverbrook, preparing to set aside existing agreements and fielding their own candidates. In some panic senior Coalition Liberals considered how to hit back at Beaverbrook and to re-inforce the party truce with Conservative Central Office. For example, on 31 October Sir Alfred Mond, speaking at Swansea, said that the British public needed to know whether it was ‘Lord Beaverbrook’s Government or Mr. Bonar Law’s. If Lord Beaverbrook wished to rule the country, he at least should have the courage to take the responsibility of office’.¹⁹

The late emergence of Conservative candidates also rankled with some Conservatives who could see the likelihood that Labour was going to be gifted seats. For example, in the Forest of Dean Constituency in Gloucestershire Augustus Dinnick (Independent Conservative) threw his hat into the campaign in apparent challenge of the local Conservative Association’s decision to back the Coalition Liberal candidate, Winifred Coombe Tennant, after she had given a pledge to support a future Bonar Law government in the conduct of foreign affairs.²⁰ One senior member of the Association expressed his anger at the interjection: ‘At the last moment a stranger, a regular “carpet-bagger” came forward as a Conservative quite unsupported by the Local Association or the Heads of the Party in London’.²¹ Such potential interventions raised the temperature within both parties as the closing date for nominations approached.

Concern at the potential impact of Beaverbrook’s action by leading Coalition Liberals led leading Coalition Liberals to approach him to see if he would break off his campaign. This involved a meeting between the newspaper magnate, Freddie Guest and Lord Birkenhead (one of the Conservative Coalitionists overthrown at the Carlton Club meeting). The meeting ended in acrimony as Beaverbrook refused to give National Liberals an easy ride. As Beaverbrook explains in The Decline and Fall of Lloyd George: ‘There was nothing doing. Tory candidates would be launched against the lot. “What! Against Churchill too?” Yes, against Churchill too. The visitors became angry. How could I go against my old and trusted friends’.²²

In Guest’s case the personal rupture was considerable. In January 1918 Guest had played a significant role in getting Beaverbrook appointed as Minister for Propaganda.²³ He wrote to Beaverbrook in distinctly hurt tones to remind the newspaperman of how he had helped him to get into government, and had defended him from accusations that he was nothing more than an adventurer with little scruple and overweening ambition.²⁴

On 5 November, Beaverbrook dismissed Guest’s letter in contemptuous fashion:

I have no desire to disturb the friendship to which you refer. I therefore overlook your observation about ‘tricky politics’ … I also appreciate the personal defence you have made of me against charges, which never had behind them the slightest foundation in fact. But I will remind you that we have both lived in a stormy atmosphere, and that I have often pleaded your cause in our own society … I really do not feel inclined to go into a kind of balance sheet of the past services we may have done each other in politics – except to deny the suggestion that I desired office, or accepted it at your hands … I pass on to the issue of public policy which is, after all, really the thing that matters. Your proposal appears to be that I should withdraw opposition on account of friendship. This argument did not move me when Churchill insisted on fighting the Russians, and it does not move me now when you and your friends are turned out for trying to fight the Turks … I cannot put you in a category apart in response to an appeal based on friendship. As to East Dorset I am not responsible for Hall Caine though I will support him.²⁵

The intervention of Beaverbrook was an unwelcome development for both Coalition Liberals and co-operation-minded Conservatives but its significance at the constituency level is impossible to quantify, given the probably covert interactions between the newspaper baron and local associations.