Tuesday 7 November 1916 — House of Commons
‘Order! Order!’ In the shadows off-stage he straightens his tie, closes his eyes, mutters a short prayer, and feels sick to his stomach. And then…
A tremendous wall of noise greets Bonar Law as he enters the chamber from behind the Speaker’s chair. Four hundred men shouting, groaning, waving order papers above their heads. Some standing, others seated. One or two leaning forward, pointing mockingly across the aisle. Mostly red-faced, post-prandial, boisterous. Some quite plainly drunk.
‘Order! Order!’ The Speaker calling to be heard. They ignore him.
As leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party and now also a senior Government minister, Law thought he could readily identify the many moods of the House. He can recognise the cheers that greet victory in the division lobby or a rousing speech. He knows also the groans that follow some crawling interjection, a ministerial embarrassment or obvious evasion, or a backbencher making a fool of himself. And he can identify immediately the unmistakable sound of the Commons in full fury. He has never suffered that indignity himself, although he had been party to two famous demonstrations that forced the Prime Minister to resume his seat without being able to speak.
This evening’s noise is different, however; partly a roar, partly a whoop of anticipation.
Government members cheer the Colonial Secretary as he shuffles along the front bench to the dispatch box. He is still unused to the experience of Liberal members cheering him, the second party leader in the now not-so-new coalition. When Asquith had been forced to reconstruct his ministry in May 1915, Law had led the Conservatives into government for the first time in ten years. This was Britain’s first modern experiment in coalition; two parties burying their separate interests and prejudices to advance a common cause. In this case to win the war.
Although Asquith’s Liberals could still command a Commons majority at that time, the mood of the country had turned against them. A general election in wartime was impossible. So the Prime Minister had decided calmly, even casually, on coalition. Law and the Unionists had joined him. But still the war continued, an exercise in butchery that even now, more than two years since its onset, showed no sign of resolution.
The Government carried on through this carnage and confusion with the strange result that Liberal backbenchers are this evening cheering a man who four years earlier they had accused of treason over Ireland. He finds it a curious and disturbing sensation. They were literally at his back, cheering him on, urging him forward, secretly willing him to fail.
But suddenly a more sinister noise rolls over from across the aisle. The concept of ‘opposition’ has little meaning now that all parties apart from the Irish are represented in the Government. Asquith had persuaded Henderson, the Labour leader, to accept appointment as President of the Board of Education and later as Paymaster-General. He had also appointed other Labour MPs to a number of junior ministries. Eight of his Liberal colleagues had been forced to leave the Cabinet to make way for Law and the Conservatives. Mostly they departed without rancour, understanding the political calculus that had sunk them, but some harboured grudges that would cause continuing problems for the new ministry.
The most spectacular casualty had been Winston Churchill, the one-time Conservative who had crossed the floor and become a Liberal minister, filling the position he most coveted, First Lord of the Admiralty, in Asquith’s first wartime government. The Tories hated Churchill with a grand and spectacular passion. The cost of persuading them to join the Government had been Churchill’s dispatch, which Asquith had accomplished with brutal efficiency. He remained in the new ministry as Chancellor
