Chancellor

Another installment in my series
CHURCHILL’S WORLD
Stories of the world during the time Winston Churchill lived in it: 1873 to 1965

Previously

When Gladstone lost the Home Rule fight in June 1886 the majority of Parliament went into opposition. That summer’s election was a disaster for the Liberals. Charles Stewart Parnell switched support to the Liberals but he triggered a backlash. Joseph Chamberlain and other Liberal leaders led their followers into an alliance with the Conservatives. When they started calling their alliance “The Unionist Party” this indicated a permanent relationship that was dire for the Liberal cause. The Unionists won one of the biggest landslides of the century.

British politics had been transformed. Three big parties had gone to two. The wedge issue was Empire versus Home Rule. The Unionists regarded turmoil in Ireland as the price of empire. With Lord Randolf’s Tory Democracy Movement and promises of reform to salve Liberal consciences, they had the upper hand.

Lord Salisbury, the new Prime Minister faced the pleasant problems of the victor. What to do with Joe Chamberlain “the Radical” and what to do with Lord Randolf? Joe Chamberlain, though more to the left than Randolf, was the easier of the two problems for Salisbury.

Joe Chamberlain had started politics as Mayor of Birmingham from 1873 to 1876. There he had championed “municipal socialism”. Entering Parliament he had made himself leader of the “Radical” wing of the Liberal Party.

His problem now was that he had nowhere else to go. His opposition to Home Rule precluded rejoining Gladstone. An alliance with Parnell was even more unthinkable. He held out “a progressive program” as the price of his continuing support. His trouble was that he held a weak hand.

Lord Randolf’s case was different. He had transformed the Conservative Party and had upended the routine pattern of British politics. How to keep him from making trouble? Salisbury decided to give him the keys to the kingdom. He appointed him Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The Chancellor was the number two man in a British administration. The Prime Minister lived at 10 Downing Street, the Chancellor at 11 Downing Street. The Chancellor was in charge of the treasury. He proposed and then managed the budget for the government.

Salisbury was not through. He also made him Leader of the House of Commons.

His other Fourth Party allies were also given key appointments. Only the Prime Minister himself was now more powerful than Lord Randolf. And he was an old man. All Lord Randolf had to do was wait until Salisbury retired. Then he would have it all.

What Salisbury didn’t know, what he couldn’t have known was that Lord Randolf couldn’t wait. When Salisbury finally did retire, Lord Randolf had been long dead.

The historian Robert Caro believes that Lord Acton had it wrong. Power does not tend to corrupt but to reveal. It did both to Lord Randolf

When he reached the top, his fits of temperamental behavior could no longer be hidden. In fact, power and responsibility made it worse. He was sick. This was the only explanation of his conduct during the months he was at the top. A friend asked him how long he expected to last as Leader. “Six months,” was the answer. “And then what?” He said, “Westminster Abbey.”

He was sullen. He quarreled with everybody. He stopped talking to Jennie. He ignored his children. He became known for his rudeness to his friends and his aloofness from everybody else.

Inside the cabinet opinion hardened against him. Winston Churchill later tried to present the story as the hard-line conservatives versus his father the reformer. In fairness to Lord Salisbury and the others, their administration eventually did turn a credible record of reform. They weren’t so much against reform; they were against his bad behavior.

Arthur Balfour wrote Salisbury,

My idea is that at present we ought to do nothing but let Randolf hammer away. . . . I am inclined that we should avoid, as far as possible, all “rows” until R. puts himself entirely and flagrantly in the wrong by some act of Party disloyalty which everybody can understand and nobody can deny.”

Lord Randolf did just this and did it in the most self-destructive way imaginable. Just before Christmas he visited the Queen at Windsor Castle. By this time it was not surprising that Jennie did not come along. While at the Castle he wrote an ultimatum to Salisbury on the Queen’s own letterhead. He did not inform the Queen.

From Jennie’s Memoirs:

So little did I realize the grave step Randolf was contemplating, that I was at that moment occupied with the details of a reception we were going to give at the Foreign Office which was to be lent to us for the occasion. Already the cards had been printed. The night before his resignation, we went to a play with Sir Henry Wolff. Questioning Randolf as to the list of guests for the party, I remember being puzzled at his saying: ‘Oh! I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you; it probably will never take place.” I could get none of his meaning and shortly after the first act he left us, ostensibly to go to the club, but in reality to go to The Times office and give them the letter he had written at Windsor Castle three nights before. In it he resigned all he had worked for years, and, if he had but known it, signed his political death warrant.”

At The Times Randolf asked the Editor to support him in his lead editorial. He refused. Randolf said, “There is not another paper in England that would not show some gratitude for such a piece of news.” The Editor replied, “You cannot bribe The Times.”

Lord Randolf’s mother the Duchess was actually at Salisbury’s home when the letter arrived. An observer wrote, she “wept large tears of fury and mortification . . . and was conveyed to London speechless.”

Jennie remembered,

When I came down to breakfast, the fatal paper in my hand, I found him calm and smiling. “Quite a surprise for you,” he said. He went into no explanation, and I felt too utterly crushed and miserable to ask for any, or even to remonstrate.”

He had been in office six months.

All this probably did not matter much anyhow. Lord Randolf had only a few years left to live and those of declining physical and mental health.

The Government sent an official to his house to take back the historic robes of the Chancellor. Jennie refused to give them back. “I am saving them for my son.”