HC Deb 05 April 1905 vol 144 cc573-88

Motion made, and Question proposed," That this House do now adjourn." (Sir A. Acland-Hood).

MR. LLOYD-GEORGE (Carnarvon Boroughs)

said he had intended to ask the Prime Minister what were the intentions of the Government in the face of the news which had arrived that night as to the fate which had befallen a member of his Administration. Notice was given to the Prime Minister that a question of that kind would be raised; the paper was handed to him and the right hon. Gentleman read it, and forthwith marched out of the House. The discourtesy with which the right hon. Gentleman was treating the House, of which he was still nominally the Leader, was becoming absolutely offensive; it hid degenerated into personal rudeness. He thought it was about time the House of Commons should resent such behaviour. This was not merely a matter which affected Members on that side of the House. He was, certain that if the Leader of the House had happened to be a Liberal, there would have been scenes which would have, at any rate, brought an end to anything of that kind such as had occurred during; the past few weeks. He appealed to hon. Members opposite who were gentlemen to resent conduct which was I not worthy of an hon. Gentleman, leaving alone the Leader of the most famous Assembly in the world. The Prime Minister having thus treated the notice given him with wilful and deliberate disrespect, he could only proceed in the right hon. Gentleman's absence. Here was an election—not like the other elections which had occurred during the last three or four years—in which the constituencies of the country had been expressing; their opinion about the Government. The by-election at Brighton was not produced by a mere accident. The constituency was chosen by the Prime Minister, after a long deliberation, as the constituency the Member for which was sure of re-election on this appointment to office. At least, the right hon. Gentleman said, the air of Brighton was safe enough for the broken nerves and the broken reputation of Ministers. But even Brighton did not save them. The candidate of the Government was a thoroughly popular and a strong local man, and yet he had been rejected by a majority of over 800, while some years ago he was returned by a majority of 2,000. Nobody would say one disparaging word against the hon. Gentleman. He himself had been present at a meeting in Brighton when every speaker spoke in the highest terms of the Tory Candidate; and that was the case at every Liberal meeting. Every circumstance was in favour of the Government. But the confidence which the Government had placed in the gullibility of the electors of Brighton was treated with the contempt which it deserved. The Government was lost long ago to all self-respect. But he appealed to the followers of the Government to try to impress upon their leader that it would be inconsistent with precedent and inconsistent with honour that they should continue in office after the overwhelming verdict which had been given against them at Brighton. He asked the Patronage Secretary to the Treasury, who was like the faithful sentinel at Pompeii, whether, in the absence of the Prime Minister, he ought not to move the adjournment of the House till Monday in order to give the Government an opportunity of reconsidering their position. The verdict of Brighton proved this, that it was not only education, fiscal reform, or the Sugar Convention of which the country disapproved, but that there was a general aid emphatic sense of disgust with the Ministry. This flouting and insult to the House and the country ought not to be tolerated any longer; and there never was a better proof of the self-restraint of the country that they had tolerated it so long.

*MR. McCRAE (Edinburgh, B.)

said he thought the House was entitled to have from the Patronage Secretary to the Treasury some intimation of the intentions of the Government, because they met under peculiar circumstances. He understood that on Monday the Budget was to be introduced, and was it right or decent in the face of the remarkable expression of opinion that day that the Government should make preparations for carrying on the finances of the country for another year? Not only that; the House had been engaged for a week in considering what the Secretary for War was pleased to call a scheme of Army reform, but which hon. Members on both sides of the House believed to be a scheme for the destruction of the Volunteer force of this country. He asked the right hon. Gentleman the Patronage Secretary to send for the Prime Minister, if the First Lord of the Treasury was in the precincts of the House, and let him know that the House desired to be informed what his intentions were. Or, if the right hon. Gentleman wished, as he was entitled to do, to consult his colleagues in the Cabinet as to the procedure they were now to adopt in view of what had happened that evening, he ought to come to the House and explain that it was his intention to do so. The right hon. Gentleman had shown great courage under very discouraging circumstances before, and surely he was not afraid to come and face the House of Commons in regard to the matter which had brought about this election to-day. He felt that an injustice had been done to Scotland in this matter. He saw on the Treasury bench the Secretary to the Board of Trade, who was the Minister that ought to have been offered as a sacrifice. That hon. Member, they all thought, was no doubt fit and suitable to fill a certain office, the vacancy of which had brought about the election in Brighton, the result of which they had just heard. But, the Blackfriars Division of Glasgow was evidently not considered a safe seat, and a post was given to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Brighton. But,, even in that part of the country there was hardly a voice which could say anything in favour of the present Government. In the interests of public decency and in the interests of this House, with all its great traditions, they were entitled to have more consideration than they had received from the Prime Minister. The right hon. Gentleman was present in the Chamber a few minutes ago, and he surely knew what had happened at Brighton, even if he did not know what occurred in the House the other evening.

SIR CHARLES RENSHAW (Renfrew, W.)

said he had listened to the hon Members opposite, and he was bound to say that he thought they had gone beyond the point to which they were entitled to go in their action—as a result, no doubt, of the exciting news which they had heard from Brighton. They seemed to suggest that it was the duty of the Patronage Secretary to produce the Prime Minister. That was an entirely novel view to take. No doubt the Brighton election had been very acutely contested. Hon. Members on the other side of the House had been deeply interested in the part they had taken in that election; and there had been great discussions as to what had been the deciding influence in bringing about the result of that election. He had appeared in that House in many characters.

AN HON. MEMBER

on the OPPOSITION Benches: Which character are you in now?.

SIR CHAELES RENSHAW

said he was sometimes spoken of as a Scotsman; but he was a Sussex man, and he knew perfectly well that there had been in Brighton an overweening opinion on the part of the Conservative organisation as to the strength of that organisation. That had caused him, as a Sussex man, considerable apprehension. It was always the case where there had been a great majority in a previous election. He thought hon. Members on the opposite side of the House would agree with him in that; because they knew themselves what injury had been caused to their Party from having too large a majority. There was another cause which had been of influence in this election, and which was of a purely local character; and that was the questions connected with the ecclesiastical position in the country.

AN HON. MEMBER

on the OPPOSITION Benches: You had that at the last election.

SIR CHARLES RENSHAW

said that there was a very strong feeling in regard to these Church questions in Brighton. Hon. Members opposite suggested that the result at Brighton was due to some dereliction of duty on the part of the Government; but he contended that it had far more to do with the state of the Party organisation owing to over-confidence, and with the state of things in that constituency in regard to Church matters.

MR. GUEST (Plymouth)

said that perhaps in many Administrations the post of Junior Lord of the Treasury was not a very important office, but to the present Government the Whips' office was one of the most important departments on which they relied for their Parliamentary success; and the Government had lost one of their men from that office. He dared say that the Prime Minister must sometimes regret that he had not yet been able to carry his cherished scheme of abolishing the re-election of a Minister after taking office. He thought, after what had happened that day, the House would be ill-advised in approving of such a scheme, because the value of re-election had been proved as well in the past as that day. The hon Baronet opposite thought that the result of the election in Brighton was largely owing to religious causes. He had the advantage of being present at a meeting in Brighton the previous night, and he could tell the hon. Baronet that, although he did not know the constituency so well as the hon. Baronet claimed to do, there was a tone and temper in the whole constituency which was quite unmistakable as to its Liberalism. The shams and shibboleths of the Government were nothing but cardboard defences when it came to an election. The country was not impressed with the ingenuous trickery of the Prime Minister, and if the Government had the courage of their opinions they would appeal to the country and then see what the result would be. He entirely repudiated the suggestion that this election had no significance. The country was sick of the Government, of their devices, their tricks, of their desertion of their posts, and of the way which they had treated the House. He told the hon. Gentlemen opposite that if they cherished the hope that this was nothing but a passing phase, a regrettable incident which would have no effect upon the total result of the general election then they were very much mistaken. They, on that side of the House, very much resented the absence of the Prime Minister, for they felt that in discussing this question they ought to have his presence. If the right hon. Gentleman was not able to be present now, why was it that he still claimed to lead this Chamber? It seemed to him that the result of the Brighton election was one which the Prime Minister could not morally ignore, and therefore he entirely supported the view of the hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs in the remarks which he had made.

MR. BROADHURST (Leicester)

said that the hon. Member for Renfrew seemed to think that the disaster to his Party had been caused by religious differences between the Protestant Party and the Tory Party in Brighton. Surely, if that were so, some respect should be paid to the religious opinions of so faithful a constituency as that of Brighton. He had been more than twenty-five years a Member of this House. Probably he was one of half-a-dozen present who had had so long an association with this great Chamber; but never before had he witnessed such continuous disrespect and insult to this House from any Government as had been shown recently. It was not only the religious opinions of the electors of Brighton which had disgusted them with the Government; the country could not but have noticed that night after night, and week after week, questions submitted to the consideration of the House had been ignored by the Prime Minister—questions on which the night hon. Gentleman knew perfectly well he would be defeated if he divided against them. The country had taken notice of all that, even if the Prime Minister had not. And if the Government were to try their hand again in some other constituency, no matter how safe it was supposed to be, depend upon it they would continue to meet with these rebuffs. The action of the Prime Minister was not only an insult to the Opposition and to the Members of the House generally, but it showed scant respect to Mr. Speaker to leave him alone in the Chair night after night without the support or any attendance whatever of a leading representative of the Government. They had present, certainly, a respected Scotch Member who, he thought, was the Lord-Advocate. He knew they had not had a single English law officer in the present Government. They were all Scotchmen or Irishmen. England repudiated this Government from one end of the country to the other; and they could not find a lawyer to fill one of the law offices of the Crown. There was now only one of the Whips left. [Great laughter, during which Sir A. ACLAND-HOOD re-entered the Chamber and took his seat on the Treasury Bench.] He was very glad that the Chief Whip had returned. The right hon. Baronet, whom they all respected, was the one man of honour still left on the Ministerial Benches of the Tory Government.

*MR. SPEAKER

Order, order! The hon. Member may use strong language with regard to political action, but he must not speak of members of the Government as men without honour.

MR. BROADHURST

I am surprised to hear that I even suggested such a thing.

*MR. SPEAKER

The hon. Member referred to the right hon. Gentleman on the Treasury bench as the one man of honour in the Government. That is a personal allusion to other Ministers which the hon. Member should not have used.

MR. BROADHURST

said that if he had put it in that way he would with draw it. He regretted if he put in the "the," and he certainly withdrew it. He saw there was one hon. Member on the Treasury Bench who had a fellow Whip on his left who had had an extraordinarily narrow squeak for his appointment of a Lord of the Treasury. His feeling was that this was a condition of Parliament never before experienced in the life of any man sitting in the House. It was a disgrace to Parliament and to the Government, and the country required that the Government should surrender its trust of honour in order that the national well-being might be secured. They should submit themselves as a whole, and not one now and again, to the consideration and verdict of the country. If they did so, in his judgment, there would be a small handful of them left to occupy the Opposition Benches. He was sure that the Patronage Secretary had the courage of his convictions at all times. He had heard the right hon. Baronet, before he took office, make speeches which were an honour to the country, and which he himself would never forget. [MINISTERIAL ironical laughter]. Yes, when the Government were traducing officers on the field of battle, the right hon. Gentleman stood up in this House for their character, honour, and ability against the whole howling set which sat by his side, and before and behind him. Would the right hon. Baronet make a full, faithful, and complete report to the Prime Minister to-morrow of the proceedings of to-night and ask the Prime Minister whether he would be prepared to-morrow—or to-day rather, since it was after midnight—to make a statement to the House as to what he considered his position to be after the lamentable and disastrous defeat at Brighton—a defeat such as had never been experienced by any Government since 1880, when the late Sir William Harcourt was defeated at Oxford. Surely the chief Whip would promise the House to make his report to the Prime Minister, and ask him to make a clean breast of his position and let the House know what his intentions were in regard to the future.

MR. CHURCHILL (Oldham)

said that they did not want to bully or assail the right hon. Gentleman on the Treasury Bench. That right hon. Gentleman had won the respect of his opponents for many reasons which he did not wish to enter into now. But he regretted to hear the hon. Member behind the right hon. Baronet endeavour to put up the lame explanation, which he did not really believe, as to the cause of this situation at Brighton. The hon. Member for Renfrew knew perfectly well that the Brighton election was not the result of over-confidence in the Party organisation, and was not the result of a particular religious controversy. He knew that it was the result of the general political situation, and very largely to the way in which the cause of free trade had been attacked. He could not help thinking that this election looked rather like the beginning of the end. It looked as if events were moving more rapidly than had been anticipated, and, to quote the words already used, "Did you think that the day of retribution would never come; it had come already." The Government were now doing penance for the disingenuousness of years. All their shams, all their shuffles, all their manœuvrings, all their scurrying from the House of Commons, all their ingenious devices of the gag and the guillotine were of no avail. These worked very smoothly here. They enabled the Government to draw their salaries with great regularity, they enabled a Party Press to proclaim each shameful trick as a brilliant triumph and a new victory. But the people now understood it all. The great syndicated newspapers, pulled by one wire from London, would try to explain it all away to-morrow morning, but he did not envy them their task. They would sit up a long time before they could explain away Brighton. They knew perfectly well how to interpret events which had taken place during the last two years, and the conduct of political affairs in the House of Commons. What a career the Conservative Party had had during those years! When the present Prime Minister received the authority of the Conservative Party from the late Lord Salisbury he was possessed of the greatest governing instrument that had been known for a generation. What had he done with it? In the space of two years, not from any conviction which he had, or for the sake of any cause he desired to push forward, but simply by weak and vacillating action, by not having the courage to state his opinions boldly on great controversies, he had wrecked his Party lost his friends, and broken up his Government by methods which also were not unnoticed in the country, and now they got the news of an election, which was not singular, but which came as the culmination of a long succession of electoral disasters, and was in itself only the herald of a greater storm. He knew nothing of the man who had been lost to the Government, but he knew that one of the principal features in the election was the disgust expressed by the working men and other electors at the treatment of the House of Commons by the Prime Minister.

The House would recollect that on more than one occasion he had used language in the House which it was not pleasant to use, which no one liked to use, and hon. friends had told him he had gone beyond the limits of what was decent and what the country would approve. Had he? He knew that it was not possible within the limits of order to use the language in that House which would not be endorsed by the great majority of voters in the country. They were sick of the Government Why did they continue in office? Why did the Prime Minister continue? Office at any price was his motto, at the sacrifice of any friend or colleague, at the sacrifice of any principle, by the adoption of any manrœuvre, however miserable or contemptible. For whom? For his Party? No. The genius of his Party was not represented in his Government. But for his friends, his personal backers. Those were the men who filled the Government to-day, with no position whatever in the country except a position attained by virtue of having won the favour and smile. In some great crisis in this country, when the ship of State had to be steered through shoals and quicksands, it was usual in English public life to assume that Ministers of the Crown were pecuniarily disinterested. He was not quite so sure whether in practice that was always the case. If not for the emoluments of office, what conceivable reason was there for the Government continuing in their position? The servile majority of the Government was perfectly ready to vote for anything. Their leader was up to all the tricks of the game; he had got the Estimates in rrears; he put on the closure at all hours? when a question came up for discussion which was likely to be awkward, he ran way from the House of Commons. And to the Government might drag on their existence longer, but the day would come surely and swiftly when it would be Brighton all over the country, and the people would express their detestation for the Government and their contempt for its character.

MR. SWIFT MACNEILL (Donegal, S.)

said that the event of to-day had shown that the absconding Prime Minister was a good prophet. The right hon. Gentleman was reported to have said three or four weeks ago, and rightly, that, in his judgment, no seat in the whole country was safe for the Tory Party except the City of London and the University of Oxford. He deeply commiserated with the right hon. Gentleman the Patronage Secretary that he had not obtained any information from the Prime Minister. But he had in his possession the latest correspondence of the superior, absconding, and skulking statesman who led the House. He had made a special study of the Prime Minister for a great number of years. The right hon. Gentleman was rather a favourite of his when, in 1891, he fought him in Donegal. He liked him still more to-night when he was hunting him off the Treasury bench. At about 11.20, seeing that the Prime Minister was on the Treasury Bench, he went to the library and wrote him the following polite letter— April 5th. Dear Mr. BALFOUR,"—he was always courteous—" I intend to make some strong comments on your Administration on the adjournment of the House to-night. As I have some disgreeable things to say I put it to you that it is incumbent on you to be present.—Yours truly. That letter was delivered to the Prime Minister, he read it, and it acted like a bomb-shell, for out he ran. The right hon. Gentleman had the pen of a ready writer; and he wondered the right hon. Gentleman did not discharge his duty by writing an account of the proceedings in the House to the King. A few minutes afterwards he received the following letter from the Prime Minister, which was equally courteous as his own, but more effusive— Dear Mr. MAcNEILL,—The practice of making the usual moving of the adjournment at midnight the occasion for a general discussion is new. If I was asked I would add that I think it undesirable. The fact that you have, as you tell me, some disagreeable things to say is, I admit, a reason which, taking it by itself, would make me greatly desire to be present. that was pretty Fanny's way. But if the mere fact that some Member of the House wanted to say disagreeable things,'' —many Members wanted to say them— were a sufficient reason for requiring the House itself, as well as the Government, to sit up beyond midnight, the Twelve O'clock Rule would be practically abrogated. This, from a right hon. Gentleman who that afternoon had carried a Resolution for the suspension of the Twelve O'clock Rule! The right hon. Gentleman added— The desire to say disagreeable things is not so rare as you appear to imagine. Then the right hon. Gentleman gave him a Parthian shot before he ran away. By the way," (that was the usual aristocratic prelude to saying a disagreeable thing) "I rather think that this afternoon you voted against the rule for relaxing the Twelve O'clock Rule on the rare occasions that it is required for the passage of money Resolutions on the Report stage. And so he did, but the right hon. Gentleman had the courage to say that in the interest of the House, he should not stay up after twelve o'clock when his personal conduct, as head of the Government, was to be challenged. It was a great joy to him, this Brighton election, because it hastened to drive from office the most detestable statesman that had ever disgraced the Government of Ireland, The Government had become odious to the country and the House. He rarely made an apology, except when he could not help himself; but he pledged himself to put down another Question with reference to Mr. Gerald Loder's position in the Government. That gentleman was personally a kindly man, and, like Charles II., if he never did a wise thing he rarely did an unwise thing. He agreed that Mr. Gerald Loder would have been a much wiser man if he had not accepted the post of Junior Lord of the Treasury, and it was because he was weighted by the sins of the Administration that he lost his seat. The right hon. Gentleman opposite went down to Brighton, and with an eloquence which would have done credit to Demosthenes or Cicero, or the hon. Member for Peterborough, said, as the chosen vessel of the Government, that it would be a snub to the King if Mr. Gerald Loder were not returned. Would the right hon. Gentleman get up and dare to say such a thing in this House? He promised that if Mr. Gerald Loder did not get another seat, the Government would be in as bad a position as Mr. Gerald Loder was to day.

MR. ERNEST GRAY (West Ham, N.)

said that when the late Sir William Harcourt was defeated at Oxford by a large majority the Government did not resign for some years afterwards. If this Government did not now resign, it would merely follow the example set them more than twenty years ago.

MR. McKENNA (Monmouthshire, N.)

said he wished the right hon. Baronet, when he came to reply, would direct his answer to this one point—why did the Government stay in office? The one great question which the Prime Minister declared, at Sheffield, it was his duty to bring before the Government and the country had been rejected and repudiated by this House. The right hon. Gentleman, therefore, had now no policy. The Prime Minister would probably come down to the House to-morrow and challenge the Opposition to move a vote of censure upon him and His Government, and state that so long as he had a majority in the House he would not resign. He would make an appeal to those who were his accomplices in evasion and would get an acquittal from them. But the country had declared against him, and one of his own Administration had been rejected by his constituents. Hon. Members were entitled to ask the Patronage Secretary, who knew the temper of the House, whether this was not an occasion for him to tell the Prime Minister that the genuine feeling of the House of Commons was against him and that the time had come for him to resign.

*SIR A. ACLAND-HOOD

In reply to the various Questions put to me I have nothing to add to the speech I made a few minutes after twelve o'clock in moving the adjournment of the House.

Adjourned at five minutes before One o'clock.