MEMORIES OF MIDLAND POLITICS.*
Low CHAramta's interesting record of his experiences as Liberal Member for East Northamptonshire from 1885 to 1910 will convince the reader that we are living in a new era. Between the peaceful days of which he writes and the present time of war there is a great gulf fixed. The old party cries which the author and his North- amptonshire friends used to echo with fervent enthusiasm, the political issues to which they directed all their energies, have become in a brief space as remote as the controversies of Whigs and Tories over the Spanish Succession. We do not mean, of course, that the national problems in which Lord, Charming was interested have lost their importance. The Land Question, for one, will always be with us, and the author's efforts to multiply allotments and small- holdings will be remembered with gratitude by many country people. But we now view these matters in a new perspective, and are conscious that even the most weighty of them are subordinate to the struggle for national existence which absorbs, or should absorb, all our energies. Thus the book which Lord Channing has compiled from his diaries and Press-cuttings seems to be a piece of bygone history, and those who, before the war, were his political opponents may now read the denunciations of their enormities not merely without rancour but with a sigh of regret for the happy days when the only warfare of which most people thought was a contested Parliamentary election. From the historical standpoint the book is of lasting value as a faithful contemporary record of Liberal politics in a typical provincial constituency through a critical quarter of a century.
Lord Charming chose his first and only constituency more or less by accident in 1885, when Franchise Reform and Redistribution were followed by an election the main issue of which, for the newly enfranchised labourers, was " Three Acres and a Cow." He says that Mr. Chamberlain, who was reputed to be a shrewd judge of seats, advised him against Wellingborough, and that of three seats which Mr. Chamberlain favoured, one became Conservative and the other two changed their party complexion at each election. His first Session in 1886 was disappointing. The small Liberal majority, " full of the eager and multiform hopes of that wonderful Parlia- ment of new men, in deadly earnest," put Lord Salisbury out and put Mr. Gladstone in, but instead of going on to consider the rural reforms which they had promised, and in which Lord Charming himself was deeply interested, they were confronted suddenly with two Irish Bills, for Home Rule and Land Purchase, which " rudely tested the temper of Members and constituents " :-
" The advanced thinker realised what governing through Irish- men and Irish ideas meant, but the sudden completeness of the proposals imperilled the broad approval most Liberals felt for the main idea. It was an hour for strength, for prompt decision. Mr. Gladstone might have approached his tremendous task by resolu- tions on Irish government, appointing a Commission to report Constitutional and Financial conditions of the best solution. That would bring line after line of forbidding country into clearer view, giving breathing space instead of rushing all the fences in one gallop, disconcerting to nerves. Glorious heroism to take the nation by storm, stake all on the overpowering force of his own convictions, with sublime faith that, by a sort of inspiration, his own reasoned statement might sweep all minds and •hearts to the same conclusion. It was one of the boldest and noblest acts of faith in political history."
Lord Charming goes on to relate how the chief Liberal Associa- tions were " taken by storm " in the name of Mr. Gladstone, and how those who rated their principles higher than their loyalty to any leader slowly made up their minds :--
" Things did not move too well. Estrangement and distrust spread. Lobbying and intrigue everywhere. The Foreign Office Meeting was summoned, unhappily only of those who were avowed supporters of the Bill. Dissentients, Whig and Radical, also held restricted meetings. There were those who advised withdrawal of both Bills that session, and a fresh start, some with honesty and goodwill, others with far different intent. Mr. Gladstone's offer at the Foreign Office to accept the second reading as a resolution, Memories of Midland Polities. By Francis Allston Charming (Lord Charming of Wellingborough). London : Constable and CO. 1148. net.J
adjourning the Committee Stage to the autumn, was misrepre- sented and perverted. Others were bent on destruction of Ministry and Bill. No amendments, no readjustment,. The only question was how many Liberals would. follow them, from conviction, or lack of nerve power. There were those who tried to make peace. Those, like myself, friends of Mr. Chamberlain and his group, were sounded and pressed. I offered to attend a meeting of that group if I could freely state my views in open discussion. A leading Liberal-Unionist frankly replied if I was not in agreement, I should stay away.' That was kind and straight."
Lord Channing, himself an enthusiastic Gladstonian, was ready to follow his chief anywhere, but he laments over " the postpone- ment of reforms which a few months before were within the grasp of the first People's Parliament." Contrary to our expecta- tion, he says that he found the long spell of Opposition, from 1886. to 1892, " the most enjoyable years of a generation." But the enjoyment was not continuous, for he notes under the year 1890 that " interest fades in the third year of a stale Parliament," when " the issues and the epigrams are worn out." Lord Charming does himself the justice of quoting from the Times of June, 1890, an excellent and prophetic letter in which he protested against the unhappy cession of Heligoland by Lord Salisbury to Germany. " The transfer of military and naval advantages," he wrote, " has a perilous and sinister signification," giving Germany the whole Bight of Heligoland as a secure naval base for use against France, and perhaps, as he ventured to hint, against Great Britain. It must be added, however, that he had been inveighing in the previous year against the " extravagant " Naval Programmes which restored our Navy, after a dangerous lapse, to its true place in the world. It was in 1890 that the author began to feel hopeful about his rural movement, which in his own constituency took shape in the first permanent Allotments Association in England :- "That was the temper of the autumn of 1890. What might we not have accomplished, to what height might not the tidal wave of Liberalism, the social and economic resurrection of a free and happy rural England have reached, but for the fall of Parnell, the split in the Irish camp, and the disintegrating and distracting repercussion of these disheartening incidents in the following year. In those three years, we really touched the hearts and hopes of the English people. Sincere and generous sympathy roused for the grievances of the Irish democracy, only helped to make our land movement for England more potent as a new political force."
The situation was saved for the Liberal Party to some extent by the Newcastle Programme. But Lord Channing states that his attempt to insert a " Labour plank " in the Party platform, mild enough as it now seems, was " shelved by timid counsels at head- quarters." He thinks that " a bold acceptance of a definite labour programme," besides rural reforms and the " stereotyped but rather hackneyed list of disestablishment, local option, registration, and taxation," appealing only to groups, " would have made all the difference." As it was, Mr. Gladstone had a considerable majority at the General Election of 1892. " But my hope," the author says plaintively, " of the possible democratic vigour and dash of that Liberal Ministry was disappointed." When the House of Lords rejected the second Home Rule Bill, as every one knew it would do, Mr. Gladstone wanted to appeal to the country at once, but his Cabinet would not follow him :— " Few now can doubt that Gladstone was right. A Christmas dissolution, fighting instant, eager, furious, led by the old leader still, might have meant victory, or have led to a deadlock that a year or two could set right, but it would assuredly not have ended in a debtiele like 1895. He was overruled, and we had to face fifteen months of conflicting ambitions, intrigue, and illwill. The blunder of December 1893 saddled us with ten years of Tory mis- rule, the South African War, and that crowning mischief ' Tariff Reform,' which at last turned the scales in our favour again in January 1906. I can claim no wisdom myself at that crisis, I was so intent on getting a solid -outcome of our Rural Programme and of Labour legislation, that I strongly pressed our Chief Whip, Mr. Marjoribanki to secure all he could. Sir William Harcourt came back after the brief recess evidently inclined to reject the Lords' amendments en bloc. My reply then was that he could not safely risk going to the country empty-handed, with a blank statute book. Many men and many motives pointed that way. The result was unsatisfactory compromise with the enemy on the land clauses of the Pariah Councils Bill. Compromises with people who have the whip hand of you are never compromises, but squeezes.' In this case we lost our vantage ground, as Gladstone foresaw, by not challenging the Lords on the arbitrary rejection of Home Rule, when the electorate had sanctioned Gladstone's Bill in the election eighteen months before, after six whole years of concentrated discussion. If Mr. Asquith was right in not hesitating one moment in 1909 on the rejection of the Budget, and on the rejection of the Resolutions in 1910, Mr. Gladstone was right in his view of things at Christmas, 1893."
Lord Charming touches very lightly on the years of dissension that followed—dissension aggravated, at the moment when it was weakening, by the South African War. He himself recalls at some length his active protests against the war policy, and in this oonnexion makes a remark which is of general application :—
" After many years, my own verdict is that, in these gravest crises of political life, it is always the wisest, as well as the most honest, policy to strike from the first the fearless note which may ' stop the rot,' and where that note is in real harmony with the underlying principles of sane and just policy, it always does stop the rot."
Then came the Tariff Reform movement to divide the Unionists, reunite the Liberals, and produce the landslide of 1906.. Lord Charming says very candidly of the huge Liberal majority that the weakness of the position was that " we could not rely on the mass of voters who had put us in, could not even measure what might result from another General Election," and that this was " the secret of the Lords' defiance." He attributes the Lords' rejection of the Budget mainly to " the push from Highbury," and says that " Mr. Chamberlain had the fatal destiny to wreck parties and institutions." Lord Charming, who deals very frankly with the reader, quotes one of his speeches of 1909 against " this tendency to enormous armaments," and goes on to say that, though he does not regret the efforts made to maintain good relations with Germany, he, like many of his countrymen, forgot that Germany was really controlled by a military despotism. It is a fact which some people still refuse to see. The author, strangely enough, criticizes Mr. Asquith for hesitation after the decisive election of January, 1910. " ` Budget and Parliament Bill together' was the true mandate." But surely so grave a Constitutional change as the abolition of the Lords' veto-power should not have been made by a Parliamentary trick.
Lord Channing devotes much of his space to the local meetings and local affairs of his old constituency, and gives among the numeroua illustrations of his book many photographs of the leading Liberals of East Northamptonshire. It is not often that a Member shows such gratitude to the hard-working people, unknown to fame; to whose voluntary services he owes so much.
Previous page
