Chapter 7 Defining Coalition Liberal strategy

On 2 November, McCurdy, Churchill and Fisher met to discuss the state of play in the election, with Churchill writing to Lloyd George the same day. The context of the meeting was that the truce between the Conservatives and Coalition Liberals was considered in danger of breaking down. A letter from Sir George Younger, reminding local Conservative Associations that the choice of whether to observe a local truce or not was up to them, was being interpreted in Liberal circles as giving free rein to the diehards to try and unseat sitting Coalition Liberals. The Times reported that as many as twenty-eight associations might bring forward candidates to break the local truce.

Younger’s purpose, backed by the promise that Central Office would not endorse any candidate not backed by the local party, was the complete opposite of Liberal suspicions. The emergence of ‘independent Conservative and Unionist’ candidates, or some variation thereon, threatened the cohesion of the party just as much as it did the deal with the Coalition Liberals. Invariably these independents were from the right of the party, and there were plenty of centre-left Conservatives disturbed at the nature of their politics. For example, in Putney, the sitting Conservative Sammy Samuels, from a wealthy Iraqi-Jewish background, found himself opposed by an Independent Unionist in the form of Cyril Prescott-Decie, former Brigadier-General and a former Divisional Commissioner in the Royal Irish Constabulary until he had resigned over the government’s Irish policy. His hard line on Irish Union seemingly extended to the rest of his politics, which prompted his intervention against a more ‘liberal Conservative’. Efforts by Younger to get Prescott-Decie to go elsewhere came to nothing, which led to considerable irritation on the part of Lord Bearsted, the very wealthy and influential brother of Sammy Samuels. He expressed his considerable reluctance to give a large donation to campaign funds while his brother was subject to a diehard challenge. His letter showed that his concern went beyond the personal: ‘If I am correctly informed these re-actionaries would set back the clock by centuries, re-establish religious disabilities and the inquisition if possible’.¹ Sir George Younger expressed his exasperation at the difficulties of keeping the party united in the face of unhelpful interventions in the election: ‘Since we have got the Die Hards into our camp I have been doing my level best … to get these internecine fights put a stop to’.² Bearsted, seemingly comforted by explanations that everything was being done that could be done, eventually relented and gave £1,000, but it was one of several issues demonstrating that from diehards on the right, to the out-and-out Coalitionists around Austen Chamberlain, party unity was constantly in question and that ‘local arrangements’ constituted the best hope of keeping the party together.

On the ground in the constituencies the emphasis on ‘local arrangements’ was not an automatic solution to the difficulties that they faced. In some cases there was pressure against local Conservatives standing behind the line of Central Office. For example, George Gibbs, leading Bristol Conservative and MP for Bristol West, wrote to Sir William Bull, to express has exasperation at the forces pulling against the Conservative–Coalition Liberal pact in the city. He said that in Bristol they had managed to preserve good relations with the Coalition Liberals, and that in each of the constituencies Lloyd George Liberals and Conservatives continued to support each other’s efforts. However, recent speeches by Lloyd George and Lord Birkenhead, and internal party missives by George Younger, had strained local Conservative-Liberal relationships to the point that maintaining political harmony in the city was daily becoming more difficult, although at the moment all five candidates continued to stand by pledges to support a Bonar Law government.³

The problem with ‘local arrangements’ as a line of policy was that diehard Conservatives, as well as those more friendly to the idea of continuing co-operation with the Lloyd George Liberals, could interpret the instruction as favouring their own hopes and intentions, and Coalition Liberals in seats where a diehard challenge was under discussion lobbied Lloyd George to do something about the flagrant attempts to violate arrangements between the two parties. Variable responses to the call to stand by ‘local arrangements’ led Lloyd George to consider activating a reserve list of as many as 150 Coalition Liberal candidates to take the fight to the Conservatives.⁴ The McCurdy, Churchill and Fisher meeting on 2 November was to consider whether to make this threat a reality, or whether some more limited response might be set in train.

With Coalitionists in both Conservative and Liberal ranks under pressure, on 2 November the Yorkshire Evening Post reported that Lloyd George had met with some of the former Coalition Liberal ministers to consider ‘reprisals’ against the Conservatives for opposing National Liberal candidates.⁵ The reality of the ‘reprisals’ considered by Churchill was tempered by the realities of the political situation. Churchill argued that, in line with calculations by McCurdy, it was likely that the National Liberals would secure around 70–80 MPs and they would hold the balance of power in the new parliament.⁶ In order to secure that number of MPs they would rely on Conservative voters supporting National Liberals in seats where local pacts remained in force. To field a larger number of candidates and to set up National Liberal challengers to Conservatives in seats already held by the Tories would invite reciprocal challenges in target seats for the National Liberals. Churchill doubted the wisdom of engaging in a wider war with their former coalition partners. Such a war would lose them goodwill and votes in those seats where party pacts held good, and the implicit threat of allowing Labour candidates to win in seats where the anti-socialist vote was split would damage the image of National Liberals. In any case, if stopping the electoral march of socialism was one of the goals of the party then it made no sense to court that as a potential outcome. A list of potential candidates, over and above those already nominated, to field against the Conservatives did exist but Churchill counselled that it should not be used (that list has not been located in the Scovell papers or in any other repository).

Churchill was, however, of the opinion that some action needed to be taken. He therefore indicated that on the morning of the next day Conservative Central Office should be approached and asked to provide a guarantee against the sudden emergence of anything other than a handful of extra prospective Conservative candidates in the election.⁷ The quid pro quo would be that Coalition Liberal headquarters would provide a reciprocal guarantee against a flood of Lloyd George Liberal candidates suddenly being brought forward. Churchill had a good political relationship with Younger, who shortly before the Carlton Club meeting had confided in him that he was very perturbed that the Conservatives, as opposed to just a few diehards, were likely to be in complete revolt.⁸ Indeed, Churchill and Younger, as fellow Scottish MPs, had worked together to manage some of the strains of the coalition within constituencies north of the border.⁹ In the circumstances of the election Churchill probably felt that Younger would be willing to work with the National Liberals in order to avoid clashes that could only benefit the Labour Party.

There was good reason to suppose that Churchill’s analysis was probably accurate. Although Younger was regarded as a diehard by many Coalition Liberals, and has generally been seen as one of the prime movers against the coalition, working with the likes of Stanley Baldwin, Samuel Hoare and some of the other Conservative junior ministers in 1922 to bring down the government in September-October, his political outlook was certainly more nuanced than simple Tory die-hardism. As party chairman from 1917, and working closely with Sir Robert Sanders, Conservative deputy chief whip, Younger had been deeply involved in the minutiae of the inner politics of the coalition. As a Scot he got on very well with Bonar Law until the latter stepped down as party leader in 1921. His relationship with Austen Chamberlain, as the new party leader, was marked by a deep suspicion that Lloyd George had him under his spell. In the midst of the 1922 General Election, Younger was only too well aware, as he monitored the appeal for campaign funds, that money in a ‘pretty expensive election’ was tight for Conservative donors and that minimising clashes between Conservatives and Coalition Liberals would help to keep costs down.¹⁰ Reprisals and an escalating battle between former allies was not in the interests of either party.

It was unsurprising that some details of the prospect of ‘reprisals’ were seemingly leaked to the press (presumably by Lloyd George) even before the group of Liberal ministers met to consider it. The Coalition Liberal Party leadership was under pressure to respond to Conservative challenges in some constituencies in the south of England. Without some kind of counter-threat it appeared likely that other associations might break with local arrangements and field their own candidates against sitting Coalition Liberals. The need to leak the question of ‘reprisals’ in order to contain the threat from local Conservative Associations, and to provide some re-assurance to sitting Coalition MPs, can be seen in this excerpt from the Western Morning News on the day of the McCurdy, Churchill and Fisher meeting: ‘So far no Conservative candidate put up to fight a Lloyd George Liberal has been withdrawn. Five of the ex-Premier’s Administration are being opposed by Conservatives, and a sixth may be included to-morrow’.¹¹ Tensions between the parties were leading to fractures within them, but it was hard for both the Conservatives and Coalition Liberals to address the tensions when they could not make their electoral strategy, and the likelihood of future close working arrangements between the two parties, clear to activists and the electorate.