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Andrew Bonar Law

‘One of the best-loved figures in our parliamentary history’

31 October 1923

The death of Mr. Bonar Law removes from the political stage, if not one of the greatest, certainly one of the best-loved figures in our Parliamentary history. As Prime Minister, he held office for only a few months, but the House of Commons has had few more successful leaders, and he will be remembered not so much for his brief career as Prime Minister as for the important part he played as a member of the Cabinet during and after the Great War. He was the first Prime Minister, as Mr. Baldwin was the second, who had the qualification of a career in business.

His active life may be divided into three unequal periods. The first is that of the forty-two years which separated his birth, in New Brunswick, Canada, in 1858, from his entry into Parliament in 1900. The second was spent in the House of Commons as a follower and then a colleague of Mr. Balfour in his Ministry, and subsequently in Opposition. The third dates from November 13, 1911, when on the retirement of Mr. Balfour he was unanimously elected leader of the Unionist Party in the House of Commons; and was concluded by his resignation of the Premiership on May 21, 1923.

Andrew Bonar Law was not born to hereditary wealth, like so many of our Prime Ministers, nor was he, like all of them before Disraeli, brought up in contact with the great political world, and in full view of its activities and ambitions. He had neither family connexions nor Eton friendships nor Oxford distinctions to smooth his path to political success. Nor had he the literary and social genius which made Disraeli well known when he was little more than a boy.

Young Law, the son of a Presbyterian minister and a Glasgow mother, spent his earliest years in Canada, but was soon sent to the High School in Glasgow, and, when school-days were over, placed in business with a Glasgow firm of iron merchants, who were of a family related to his own. He had a marked success as a man of business, and, if that had been his ambition, he might no doubt have become one of the magnates of the industries of the Clyde.

Like Joseph Chamberlain, with whom he was soon to be so closely connected, he decided, comparatively early in life, that he had made as much money as he needed, and that it was time to gratify the political ambitions which he had entertained from boyhood. The result was that in 1900 he retired from business and entered Parliament as Conservative member for the Blackfriars Division of Glasgow.

Few men have made their mark more quickly. His first speech, a reply to an attack by Mr. Lloyd George on the conduct of the South African War, attracted attention, not only by its argumentative power, but by its exhibition of his extraordinary gift, conspicuous throughout his career, for dealing with a complicated series of facts and arguments without the assistance of a single note. This speech won for him the warm congratulations of his leaders and the admiration of the House. But the Press Gallery was not equally complimentary; and in later years he would tell the story of his disappointment when, conscious of his success, he looked to see what the newspapers would say of him, and got no better reward for his trouble than the remark that “the debate was continued with characteristic dullness by Mr. Bonar Law.” To the very end his great qualities were far more clearly perceived and appreciated by members of Parliament than they were by the world outside.

He became Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Trade in 1902, and when, during the following year, Chamberlain proposed the policy of Tariff Reform and resigned in order to preach it, Bonar Law was perhaps his most active, convinced, and convincing supporter.

The country, however, did not respond to the appeals either of Chamberlain or of Bonar Law. Mr. Balfour, who struck an uncertain note, resigned, and the Unionist Party was routed at the General Election which followed in January, 1906. Bonar Law lost his seat, but soon returned to Parliament as member for Dulwich. The failure of Chamberlain’s health increased Bonar Law’s importance among Tariff Reformers, who saw in him the ablest exponent of their views.

At the second General Election of 1910, Bonar Law, abandoning his safe seat, came near to victory in a gallant fight in North-West Manchester. Meanwhile, the Conservative Party grew more and more dissatisfied with Mr. Balfour’s leadership, and he resigned in the autumn of 1911. The Conservative members of Parliament seemed almost equally divided between the claims of Mr. Long and Mr. Austen Chamberlain to the succession. All but those who were very much behind the scenes were surprised when the difficulty was solved by the retirement of both in favour of Mr. Bonar Law, who had returned to the House as member for Bootle. One of the reasons in his favour was, no doubt, that, though at least as convinced a Tariff Reformer as Mr. Austen Chamberlain, he had a name less alarming to those who did not love that policy. The rest was done by his ability in debate, and by the general liking which his unpretentious kindliness, simplicity, and common sense had won from his party, and, indeed, from the House as a whole.

Bonar Law held the Leadership for over nine years, and the first three and a half of these were spent in Opposition. Naturally enough, having come in to make good what was considered Mr. Balfour’s weakness, he was more tempted to exhibit the opposite fault. No leader of Opposition has ever taken up a more uncompromising attitude than Bonar Law assumed as against all the policies of the Asquith Ministry. No doubt he was fortified by the probably well-founded conviction that not one of these policies would have been ratified by the electorate if it could have been submitted as a single issue. It was with this feeling that he declared that a meaner Bill, or one brought forward by meaner methods, than the Welsh Disestablishment Bill had never been introduced into Parliament.

On the Irish question, no prominent Conservative, except Sir Edward Carson, went further than the Leader of the party in uncompromising resistance to the proposals of the Ministry. He went over to Belfast, and at a great demonstration of Ulstermen advised them to trust to themselves, prophesying that if they did so they would save themselves by their exertions and save the Empire by their example. And in July, 1912, he said, in a speech at Blenheim, that he could imagine no lengths of resistance to which the Ulstermen might go in which he would not be prepared to support them, subsequently declaring in Parliament that these words were deliberate and had been written down beforehand.

There is this at least to be said with confidence about his Irish attitude. He fixed his attention on what the history of the next ten years proved to have been the real point, though Mr. Asquith’s Government attempted to ignore it till their blindness had led the country to the verge of civil war. The World War prevented the possibility of the Irish war, but when the question again became alive it had become clear to all that Bonar Law had been right in always regarding the problem of Ulster as the vital one.

The moment it became obvious that the risk of war was acute and immediate, Bonar Law gave an assurance of Opposition support to Mr. Asquith. And the promise was more than fulfilled. All that a leader of Opposition could do to encourage the King’s Government and strengthen its hands was done by Bonar Law from the eve of the declaration of war.

Ten months later, he and his friends were invited by Mr. Asquith to share the responsibilities of office. The post which Bonar Law took was that of Colonial Secretary but his most important work as a Minister was not departmental. He showed admirable loyalty to the Prime Minister, as Mr. Asquith frequently testified.

But he became gradually dissatisfied with a certain lack of vigour in the conduct of the war, and in December, 1916, he supported Mr. Lloyd George in his demand that it should be entirely entrusted to a Committee of four, of whom the Prime Minister was not one. The strangest thing about this strange proposal is that Mr. Asquith considered accepting a slight modification of it. It was made on December 1. By the 5th Mr. Asquith had definitely rejected it, and first Mr. Lloyd George and then Mr. Asquith resigned.

The King naturally invited Mr. Bonar Law to form a Ministry, but Mr. Lloyd George was plainly the man of the moment, and he became Prime Minister on December 7. He formed a War Cabinet of five, of whom, of course, one was Bonar Law, who, taking the lead of the House of Commons, was not expected to attend the Cabinet as regularly as the other four, but was effectively Leader of the House of Commons, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a member of the War Cabinet.

In this third capacity he played a less conspicuous part; but he knew what he wanted and meant to get it. “We are fighting for peace now,” he told the Pacifists, “and for security for peace in the time to come; you cannot get that by treaty. There can be no peace till the Germans are beaten and know that they are beaten.”

The Ministry decided to appeal to the country directly after the Armistice, and to make their appeal as a Coalition, though most of the Labour Ministers resigned and the Labour Party had their separate election programme. Bonar Law, who was himself returned for Central Glasgow, a seat which he held till his death, joined with the Prime Minister in issuing a manifesto to the electors which was completely successful in winning the election, but had disastrous results when it was won.

There can be little doubt that its general suggestion of a new heaven and earth after the war came rather from the somewhat shallow optimism, or from the electioneering instincts, of Mr. Lloyd George than from the Scottish caution and common sense of Bonar Law. It is likely that Bonar Law was more pleased with the overwhelming victory which the manifesto produced than alarmed at the unrealisable expectations which it was certain to arouse.

The principal business of the new Ministry, in which Bonar Law ceased to be Chancellor of the Exchequer but remained Leader of the House of Commons, was the making of the Peace. But with that Bonar Law, though appointed one of the Plenipotentiaries, had little to do, as his duties in Parliament seldom allowed him to attend the Paris Conference. He had, indeed, enough to do at home. On the whole, Bonar Law and his colleagues, inspired by Mr. Lloyd George, may be said to have met the difficulties, for which they were partly responsible, with a mixture of sympathy and firmness which gave time for illusions to wear themselves out, and for economic realities to assert themselves in the minds of all parties.

In March 1921, Bonar Law was suddenly taken ill, and at once resigned and went abroad. He returned in time to support the so-called Treaty of December, 1921, constituting the Irish Free State. For that Agreement Bonar Law had no responsibility, but he returned to his place in the House of Commons to give it his support and urge Ulster to accept it, insisting that England would never allow her to be invaded or coerced by the rest of Ireland.

Bonar Law had a great reception in the House on his reappearance. But he at once resumed the retirement which his weak health continued to make necessary. However, he was now watching events more closely, and, as even the speech on the agreement showed, with more detachment. The position, amounting to something like a dictatorship, which Mr. Lloyd George had assumed was regarded with more and more dislike by a large number of Conservatives, and Bonar Law, no longer in daily touch with the wand of the magician, gradually became critical of it. Matters came to a crisis in the autumn and, finally, on October 19, 1922, a meeting of Conservative members of the House of Commons was held at the Carlton Club, at which a motion was carried declaring that the Conservative Party should fight the election “as an independent party with its own leader and its own programme.” This motion Bonar Law had, the day before, been persuaded to come and support. The result was that Mr. Lloyd George resigned and Bonar Law became Prime Minister on October 23.

The election campaign almost immediately followed, and the new Prime Minister’s speeches sharply marked his departure from the Lloyd George system and atmosphere. He declared for a policy of tranquillity and economy, reduction of our commitments, so far as our obligations allowed, both abroad and at home, and abandonment of the practice of constant personal intervention by the Prime Minister in the work of the Departments. Never was an election a greater contrast to its predecessor. Instead of a flood of promises, there were no promises at all. But the electors were tired of them, and in 1922 Bonar Law, with his simplicity and tranquillity, was as much the man of the moment as Lloyd George had been in 1918 with his magniloquent promises and programmes. The elections resulted in the return of 344 Conservatives, giving the new Ministry a sufficient majority even if all sections of the Opposition combined against them.

Mr. Bonar Law’s Premiership was one of the shortest on record. It was with many fears that he had gone to the Carlton Club meeting, but he had been given reason to hope that he might be able to bear the strain of office for at least a year. He bore it only for about six months, when his voice failed and he had to go away for a complete rest. When he returned, on May 20, 1923, he was too ill to do anything but resign.

In so short a Premiership, interrupted by a General Election, he had obviously little opportunity to leave any great mark on public affairs. The chief problems with which he had to deal were unemployment at home and Franco-German relations abroad. His refusal to receive a deputation of the unemployed, whom he referred to the Minister of Labour, was a courageous illustration of his determination to leave each Department to do its own business, and, after some agitation, was vindicated by success. For the rest Bonar Law maintained his old popularity in the House of Commons, of which his qualities both of mind and of temper made him a born leader. Indeed, he held the affections of his colleagues and of members of Parliament as very few leaders have. When his daughter married almost every member of the House subscribed to a present for her; and the same kind of feeling was shown when he finally retired in such tributes as that of his successor, Mr. Baldwin: “Of Mr. Bonar Law I cannot trust myself to speak: I love the man.”

No man could have played the part which he played during the five most strenuous years of English history without being possessed of very rare qualities. “Character, character, character,” said one of those who had known him longest. That, and his modesty and simplicity, his life of duty and austerity, his complete indifference to pomps and vanities and privileges of power, combined to give him a place in hearts of his friends and in the confidence of the nation which men of more dazzling genius have been able to win.

Mr. Bonar Law married in 1891 Annie Pitcairn, daughter of Harrington Robley, of Glasgow. She died in 1909, leaving several children. Two of the sons were killed in the war; one of the daughters is the wife of Major-General Sir Frederick Sykes.