The Annual Register 1914 / A Review of Public Events at Home and Abroad for the Year 1914

by Anonymous

Speaking to a select audience representative of his constituency at Ladybank (April 4), the Prime Minister began by ridiculing the Unionist rumours in circulation—the story of the plot, the story that he had accepted his new office to escape for a fortnight from meeting the Unionist leaders in the House, the statement that his open journey to his constituency was provocative; and he ridiculed also the hesitation of the Unionists in opposing him. He had taken his new office in view of the grave situation that had arisen regarding the discipline of the Army and its relations to the civil power. As chairman of the Imperial Defence Committee, he knew the zeal, devotion, and settled traditions of discipline and honour pervading the military and naval forces of the Crown. The Army was not, and he prayed that it might never become, a political instrument; as an Army—and here he cited the elder William Pitt—it had no voice in the framing of policy and laws. "The Army will hear nothing of politics from me, and in return I expect to hear nothing of politics from the Army." The responsibility for the preservation of domestic order lay with the magistrates and police. In special emergencies the Army was called in to assist; in these it was the duty of the soldier, as of the civilians, to comply with the lawful demands of the civil power. The doctrines recently promulgated by some of the Tory leaders struck at the roots not only of Army discipline but of democratic government. As to the Home Rule Bill, he had brought the question into prominence at St. Andrews on December 7, 1910, and there was a complete justification for the application of the Parliament Act to it; but the Government were anxious to work out an agreed settlement, and hence the proposed optional exclusion of Ulster for a term of years. He should have preferred other solutions, but this one satisfied the conditions in his speech of October, 1913 (A.R., 1913, p. 219). The proposal had led to an unprecedented expression from both sides of the House of a desire to find some road to settlement, but any settlement must involve the placing of the Home Rule Bill on the Statute-book. Finally, Mr. Asquith referred to the other great Liberal measures pending, and deprecated division among the forces of progress.

The last day of the Home Rule Bill debate exhibited a continuance of the apparent movement towards a solution by consent, Mr. John Redmond (N.), after reviewing the various proposals for settlement, said that the only proposal from the side of Ulster was the total exclusion of Ulster, which was not a compromise, and was not put forward as the price of peace; the exclusion of Ulster by counties he regarded as dead; the Federal solution had been suggested in 1832, favoured by O'Connell and Parnell, and was the basis of Isaac Butt's movement. If Federalism meant that Ireland was to have priority, that her powers under the Bill were not to be watered down, and that the six years' limit was to stand, the Nationalists raised no objection. But the Opposition received that proposal with scoffing, and the only course was to proceed with the Bill as it stood. But even yet he did not despair of a settlement.

Sir Edward Carson (U.) said that Mr. Redmond's speech showed that there had been no real advance towards peace and conciliation. He had killed even the offer of the temporary exclusion of Ulster. If the Bill was passed, Federalism would be impracticable, for there would be no power over the Irish Parliament. Did Sir Edward Grey's speech mean that the Bill would be suspended till after a new Parliament had decided whether it was to be enforced? There was only one policy possible: "Leave Ulster out until you have won her consent to come in". Coercion would mean ruin to Ulster and to Ireland, and possibly to Great Britain also. This apprehension in Ulster was what the Nationalists had to overcome. Turning to them he said: "It is worth while your trying. Will you?"

The Attorney-General interpreted this speech as a great and significant advance towards conciliation. He added that the Prime Minister's offer of temporary exclusion was not withdrawn, and would remain open to the latest possible moment. If the exclusion would be till Parliament otherwise ordered, the House of Lords, at any rate as at present constituted, might frustrate the decision of the country. As to the Federal solution, Ireland came first because its case was urgent, and English opinion on Federalism was less advanced than Scottish, Irish, or Welsh. The immediate duty of the House was to go on with the Bill as it stood, but the Government hoped the efforts towards a settlement would still continue.

Mr. T. Healy (I.N.) in a brilliantly scornful speech, denounced Ministers for proposing the exclusion of Ulster and the Nationalist leaders for accepting it, and for making no effort at a settlement by other means. Exclusion was a device of Sir Edward Carson for killing the Bill. Later, Mr. Bonar Law (U.), who commented severely on the absence of the Prime Minister "from causes which might have been prevented or delayed," and of the Foreign Secretary, said he desired to convince the House and the country that the Unionists were prepared to make every possible sacrifice for peace. He had Lord Lansdowne's authority to say that, if the new proposals were embodied in a Bill and endorsed by the House and the country, the House of Lords would let it become law without delay. The Government might justify their denial of a "bargain" with the Nationalists by some quibble, but Mr. Redmond had not done so; the "Kilmainham treaty" afforded a parallel to the denial of the "bargain." The other way of escape was by the exclusion of Ulster, and the Unionists would welcome that proposal in a form in which it could be discussed, because the time-limit could not stand discussion. He described the Foreign Secretary's intimation as to the Government action towards Ulster as a cold-blooded indication of a policy securing bloodshed there. It was the duty of the Government to maintain order, but it was equally their duty to avert a situation requiring the use of force. The Foreign Secretary would not coerce the Epirotes, and the British conscience would not permit the coercion of Ulster.

After a conciliatory speech from the Chief Secretary for Ireland, who thought considerable progress had been made towards a settlement, the debate was closured and the rejection of the Bill defeated by 356 to 276. Sir Clifford Cory (L.) and Mr. Agar-Robartes (L.) voted in the minority; Mr. Pirie (L.) and the eight Independent Nationalists abstained. The majority for the Bill, putting aside the votes of all members from Ireland, was five.

Next day the East Fife Unionists decided not to oppose the Prime Minister, and he was returned on April 8 without a contest.

The militant suffragists, like the Labour members, had used the action of the Ulstermen and the officers as an argument for their own militancy; but their acts, while far exceeding anything yet attempted on the part of Ulster, were vexatious, but hardly formidable. Still, the perpetrators frequently escaped discovery; punishment was no deterrent; and imprisonment was speedily ended by hunger and thirst strikes, entailing temporary discharge under the "Cat and Mouse" Act. Miss Sylvia Pankhurst and her mother, thus released, were rearrested on their way respectively to demonstrations in Trafalgar Square (March 8) and St. Andrew's Hall, Glasgow (March 9); rioting followed and both were released after fresh hunger-strikes on March 15. Meanwhile Miss Mary Richardson had damaged with a chopper the Rokeby Velasquez in the National Gallery (bought by subscription in 1906), in order, as she explained, to protest against the treatment of the most beautiful character in modern history—Mrs. Pankhurst—by destroying the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythology; but her sentence of six months' imprisonment was soon suspended by a hunger-strike. A month later (April 9) a woman smashed a case in the British Museum containing porcelain, but did little damage. A charity performance attended by the King and Queen at the Palladium was interrupted (March 17); an attempt to carry Miss Sylvia Pankhurst into Westminster Abbey (March 22) was unsuccessful, but a clergyman conducted a suffragist service outside. A woman clumsily disguised as a man awaited the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary in the Commons lobby with a riding whip, but was detected and sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment (March 16, 17); and a discussion in the Poplar Borough Council whether its halls should be let to suffragists (March 26) was broken up by militants in the Council and the audience. A graver outrage was a bomb explosion at St. John the Evangelist's Church, Westminster (March 1), after evening service; a stained glass window was shattered. Damage was done a week later in Birmingham Cathedral; the interior was daubed with white paint, suffragist mottoes were displayed, and a stained glass, window injured. Attempts were made to fire churches at Clevedon (March 21) and Glasgow (March 28), and an unoccupied house at Stewarton, Ayrshire (March 12), in revenge for Mrs. Pankhurst's rearrest; and, when Sir Edward Carson, after some days' picketing of his house, had refused to press women's enfranchisement under his Provisional Government, a house belonging to General McCalmont at Abbeylands, near Belfast, was burnt likewise. Though all this estranged the general public, militancy found ardent and devoted support among both sexes, and the receipts of the Women's Social and Political Union, for the year ending with February, 1914, amounted to nearly 37,000l., apart from some thousands raised independently by local branches. Mrs. Pankhurst's American tour in 1913 had produced 4,500l.

Besides the suffragist troubles, there had been a host of fresh manifestations of the general Labour unrest. In the London building trade (p. [3]) further proposals for a settlement, made by the National Conciliation Board, were rejected by the men on a ballot in April by 23,481 to 2,021. A coal strike in South Yorkshire in March and April on the question whether certain additional payments to the men were to continue to be paid in spite of an increase of the minimum wage, though brief, proved costly, and was ended on April 15 by the acceptance of the terms offered on a ballot by 27,259 votes to 15,866. Other strikes occurred in the furniture trade at High Wycombe (settled by a conference under Sir George Askwith on February 23, when an elaborate code of rules and rates was devised to prevent the recurrence of disputes) and among agricultural labourers in various places, notably at Helions Bumpstead in Essex at the end of February, and on Lord Lilford's estate in Northamptonshire in April, where the men pressed for increased wages, a Saturday half-holiday, and recognition of the union.