The Decline Of The Liberal Party 1910-1931 by Paul Adelman

Author:Paul Adelman [Adelman, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Political Science
ISBN: 9781317889274
Google: 1FGPBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-09-19T16:07:09+00:00

5

LLOYD GEORGE AS LIBERAL LEADER

LLOYD GEORGE TAKES OVER

The shock of the 1924 general election did little to make the Liberals face the realities of their political position. The fundamental problems of leadership, organisation, finance, and policy still remained; and so far as the party hierarchy was concerned the Liberals were now even more disunited than before. Asquith’s hold over the Parliamentary party became increasingly tenuous since he was now raised to the peerage and sat in the House of Lords as Lord Oxford; while a majority of the tiny group of Liberal MPs (unlike the situation in 1923) were ex-Coalitionists, sympathetic to Baldwin’s Conservative government. Asquith’s supporters still remained hostile to Lloyd George, as determined as ever to prevent him emerging as party leader, and seeing him as ‘immeasurably the greatest obstacle to Liberal progress’ [98 p. 110]. They failed, however, to prevent Lloyd George being elected Chairman of the Parliamentary Liberal party by thirty-six votes to seven. The Asquithian minority in the House of Commons, under Runciman’s leadership, expressed their displeasure by forming the so-called ‘Radical Group’, ‘radical’ only in the Pickwickian sense that they were determined to oppose both the Conservative government and the Labour party, and thus prepare for the next electoral, battle.

This meant, as always, money; and therefore raised once again for the Asquithian party managers the distasteful topic of the Lloyd George Fund. Faced with a desperate financial position both at headquarters and in the constituencies, the need for a large long-term income for the party was plain for all to see. But on the thorny question of using the fund to rescue the party from impending bankruptcy, the attitude of both sides had advanced not a jot since the discussions that had preceded the 1924 election. ‘His money was got in unholy ways’, complained Gladstone, ‘but what earthly right has he got to the exclusive use of it?’ [98 p. 110]. Lloyd George remained, however, as full of excuses and as reluctant to contribute to an Asquithian-controlled party exchequer as ever; he would be ‘a bloody lunatic’ to do so, exclaimed his Labour friend, Jimmy Thomas [98 p. 124], and besides he had other political uses for the money. The new Liberal Administrative Committee therefore launched the ‘Million Pound Fund’ at the beginning of 1925 to make the party financially self-supporting. The scheme had some success at a local level but overall it was a dismal failure and only served to reveal to the country at large the true plight of the Liberal party. This failure also increased the Asquithians’ resentment of Lloyd George – especially since he was now planning to spend £240,000 on his Land League – but made them more dependent on his charity. The price demanded by Lloyd George for any future help was in effect the Liberal party’s support for his ‘land campaign’.

This campaign was begun in September 1925 with a brilliant opening speech by Lloyd George at a rally in the West Country, a prelude to the publication in the following month of The Land and the Nation, known popularly as the ‘Green Book’.

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