Paul Addison

In the first half of the 20th century, Britain experienced two peacetime coalitions: the Lloyd George Government of 1918, and Ramsay MacDonald’s ‘National Government’ of 1931. Both were unsuccessful hearttransplants. After a while, political opinion reacted almost violently against them, and the double rejection served to discredit the idea of repeating the experiment. The prejudice in favour of clear-cut party politics seems to have been taken over by historians, for until recent years both coalitions suffered considerable neglect. Yet both were of decisive importance in redirecting the state after a catastrophe. The Great War and the Slump alike necessitated a clearing-up operation to restore a sense of stability and normality. The paradox on each occasion was that such a restoration demanded innovations and a clear break with the past. In recent years, the idea of coalition has again achieved a certain respectability, and, as if in sympathy, historians have moved to reassess the forgotten regimes. Now Kenneth Morgan has written a first-class study of the Lloyd Georgian experiment of 1918-1922.

John Robert Seeley was Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge between Kingsley and Acton. One of the few eminent Victorians who inspired no memorial biography, he was best remembered as the author of The Expansion of England (1883), a sweeping historical manifesto in favour of the unification of the British Empire. The book survived as long as the Empire itself, but otherwise Seeley was neglected until in recent years Richard Shannon and Sheldon Rothblatt both identified him as a leading figure in the reorientation of the Victorian élite. Plainly there was scope for an intellectual biography to match the ideas to the man, and the task was undertaken as a PhD by Deborah Wormell. It is appalling to learn that she died this February at the age of 33, shortly after revising her thesis for publication. She was a most accomplished intellectual historian.

There have been aristocrats in British politics since Arthur Balfour. But the career of ‘Prince Arthur’ was the last great expression of the old aristocratic system before it crashed. In the late 19th century a flourishing grapevine of wealthy and leisured families still clambered in profusion around the House of Commons and the Cabinet. At 10 Downing Street Lord Salisbury promoted his relations so vigorously that his administration became known as the ‘Hotel Cecil’, and the apple of his eye was undoubtedly his nephew, Arthur Balfour. A delicate and bookish young man, Balfour was at first written off by men of the world as a bit of a cissy. At Cambridge he was nicknamed ‘Pretty Fanny’, and it was noted that instead of riding and shooting at weekends he preferred to hang about with the girls. But Lord Salisbury knew that his nephew was made of sterner stuff. In 1886, he tried him out as Secretary for Scotland and Balfour proved his worth by imposing law and order on the rebellious crofters of the Isle of Skye. The following year he was promoted to the Irish office and set about the suppression of rural protest with an iron fist. Soon he was heir apparent, and in 1902 it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should succeed his uncle as Prime Minister.

Politics are three-quarters drudgery, so it takes a special ingredient to enliven the diary of a politician. Harold Nicolson and Chips Channon wrote splendid diaries because they were not so much politicians as sublime social columnists who happened to sit in the House of Commons. Richard Crossman and Barbara Castle were heavyweights and professionals, and the eternal grind of committee life is reflected in their accounts. Yet both were writing with the special excitement of socialist voyeurs. Determined to expose the secrets of Whitehall while the story was still hot, they were strongly aroused by the sight of naked acts of power, and thrilled to bits by their own part in the proceedings. With the diaries of Leopold Stennett Amery we return to the politics of an era whose revelations are chiefly of interest to professional historians. And we return in the company of a politician who was often regarded as a long-winded bore.

A century ago Joseph Chamberlain was the Tony Benn of his time, the bogeyman of moderate and conservative opinion. The point is familiar to historians of the period, but never easy to convey. Why, after all, should the upper classes have been scared of a Liberal? Were the Liberals not a party of property and wealth? Indeed they were, and from the gallery of the House of Commons one could observe a multitude of well-fed, broad-bottomed types on the Liberal benches. But seen through the eyes of a true Tory, bred to the Church and the Land, these gentlemen appeared to be a pretty suspect crowd. Welshmen, Scots, Dissenters, tradesmen – there was something wrong with all of them. Many were in league with Irish agitators and the whole party was nothing but a confederacy directed against the traditional ruling class. Their leader, Mr Gladstone, was a dangerous old man and a firebrand at heart, and after him worse would surely follow. On the left of the Party, where the real crackpots and doctrinaires gathered, stood the lean, arrogant and transparently ambitious figure of Joseph Chamberlain.