The General Election took place on December 14th and Mr. Lloyd George was returned to power with a majority of 249 over all the independent groups. For the 602 seats in Great Britain no less than 478 official Coalition candidates were elected, while the suicidal policy of the Sinn Feiners resulted in the practical elimination of the Irish Party as a parliamentary force. Most of the leading Independent Liberals were defeated, and the Coalition was returned with a powerful and overwhelming mandate to carry out its stated policy both at home and abroad.
Parliament met to take the oath on February 3rd, 1919, and was opened by the King for business on Tuesday, February 11th. It was emphatically a war-born Parliament, but there were also signs of the New World which had emerged from the war. Only 365 of the old members had been re-elected. Labour stood out as the strongest party in opposition, and its parliamentary leaders took their places on the Front Opposition Bench.[[139]] The opening took place under ominous signs of civil strife. The unrest of labour, restrained by patriotic motives during the war, had already broken out into open flame. A general strike on the Underground Railways held London in a grip of paralysis, made harder by a bitter February frost. Mr. Lloyd George attended Parliament before going to the Peace Conference in order to utter a grave warning against the dangers of those social strifes. “This trouble,” he said, “is impeding peace; and peace is the first necessity.” He warned the country against certain symptoms of anarchy new to British movements; and he had grave reason for so doing. But, at the same time, his attitude towards the real grievances of Labour was always sympathetic and open-minded. His own life had taught him too well the reality of those fears which enshroud the workman’s existence: the dread of unemployment; the precariousness of wage; and, above all, that fearful evil of over-crowding which had been so seriously aggravated by the war. He promised full investigation, and within a few days he called together at the Central Hall, Westminster, a Labour Conference between employers and employed, to whom he addressed himself in an earnest and persuasive speech. All through the labour troubles of this year Mr. Lloyd George pursued the same consistent policy. He was firm against anarchy, and yet open to reason in regard to all real complaints. He had his ears open to the call of the new order. But he dreaded the complete smashup of the old society before the new was ready, and the events in Russia faced him as a glaring red light. But he stood firm against coercion and repression as the only cure for unrest, and he saved his Government from pursuing the policy which, after Waterloo, led to the tragic anti-climax of Peterloo.
But there were many impatient men in the world in 1919, and the English mind was apt to demand payment in immediate cash for all Mr. Lloyd George’s sanguine perorations. The Tube Strike in London was followed almost instantly by a great crisis in the mine-fields. The miners rejected the first Cabinet offer, and instantly went to ballot on the question of a general strike. The rank and file voted for the strike by a majority of six to one.[[140]] The Government replied by offering a Royal Commission, which the miners accepted after a candid debate between them and Mr. Lloyd George, which was certainly a new development of open diplomacy in civil affairs. Mr. Justice Sankey was appointed as Chairman of the Commission, and, after a hot debate in the House of Commons on February 25th, the Government promised that the Commission should report on the question of wages and hours by March 20th. On those conditions the miners agreed to appoint representatives to the Royal Commission and to present evidence.
Promptly on March 20th Mr. Justice Sankey’s Commission reported, recommending an increase of two shillings a day in wages and an immediate seven-hour day, to be reduced to six hours in 1921. The revelations before the Commission as to the housing and conditions of labour among the mining population made it easy for the Government to meet the miners. They instantly granted them both these concessions, and the strike was postponed. But the question of nationalisation of the mines was held over, to become a widening political issue between the Government and Labour during the rest of the year.
The Labour crisis died down for the moment, and did not recur in an acute form until later in the year (October) when the railwaymen, whose needs had perhaps been too little regarded in the stress of the mining crisis, precipitated a struggle by a sudden and almost universal strike. For a few days the situation looked extremely grave, and there is no doubt that there were extreme forces working on both sides in the direction of civil war. But after a short period of natural impatience with the conduct of the railwaymen, Mr. Lloyd George steadied himself back to his old combination of firmness and concession. On the side of the strikers, both the miners and transport workers were in favour of moderation, and, in the end, the moderate forces won. The threatened revolution was averted by a quite ordinary compromise on hours and wages. The whole crisis ended with a friendly and even enthusiastic meeting of both parties—a sort of “sing-song”—in the domestic atmosphere of 10, Downing Street. It was a striking exhibition of Mr. Lloyd George’s characteristic gifts of control and conciliation.
Like Columbus’s settlement with the egg, this performance seemed easy enough when it was achieved. But we must remember that Mr. Lloyd George stood between two forces both equally violent. On the one side there were the Direct Actionists, the “parlour Bolshevists” of the trade unions, fascinated by M. Sorrel’s[[141]] opiate dream of dominating the modern State through its complex organisation of food and transport. The thing seemed so easy: and it would have been easy if Mr. Lloyd George had not, for months before the strike, prepared to prevent it. The motor-lorries that supplied London with milk were not organised in a day. They were part of a perfectly legitimate counter-stroke prepared by the Government when they realised the extent of the plot to hold up the national life. But on the extreme wing of the Government’s side there was an equally violent section who cried, “Let’s fight it out to the end! Let’s smash Trade Unionism! Now’s the time to put Labour in the cart!”—elegant phrases, which we all heard in those days. To this temper Mr. Lloyd George was vitally opposed. He was out to fight Bolshevism and “Direct Actionism,” but not Trade Unionism. Happily, in this middle policy he was met half-way by several far-sighted leaders of trade unions, notably Mr. J. H. Thomas, who, while resolutely upholding the rights of the railwaymen, refused to surrender to the revolutionaries. On the Friday Mr. Lloyd George came to the conclusion that he, too, must resist his own extremists and go half-way to meet the trades union moderates. We all remember how, under this new policy of conciliation, the terrors of that critical week passed away like mists before the wind, and Sunday brought us a sudden and welcome peace. It was the triumph of the middle point of view, the old method of British common sense which refuses to burn the house in order to build it better.
Mr. Lloyd George was now called to Paris for the great work of European settlement, and the task of reconstruction was left to his Ministers at home. From February to May Mr. Bonar Law led the House of Commons and practically acted as Home Prime Minister. He began to develop the programme of reconstruction promised by the Government at the time of the General Election. On February 26th Mr. Shortt introduced a measure to which Mr. Lloyd George had given a great deal of thought and attention—the Ministry of Transport Bill, constituting a bold claim on behalf of the State to supreme control of railways, canals, tramways, roads, harbours, docks, and electric supply. On March 17th Sir Eric Geddes ably defended the Bill and gained a second reading without a division.
It was scarcely to be expected that so great a change should take place without resistance from the vested interests asked to submit to control. In the course of the discussions that ensued various claims of the State had to be modified and some withdrawn, especially in regard to the docks and roads. But in the end a powerful measure was passed on to the Statute Book, and already, with the firmer grip over transport and traffic which the Ministry of Transport is able to exercise, the country is feeling the tremendous advantages of this measure. It is safe to say that no Party Government could have carried so big a measure with so little debate within a year of the ending of the war.
After Transport, Housing—a far more difficult question. The difficulties and troubles which beset the Government throughout 1918 on this critical question have become notorious to all men. Dr. Addison took the first step by introducing, on April 7th, a Housing Bill which was certainly stronger than any hitherto placed before Parliament. Mr. Lloyd George, before going to Paris, had taken an active part in pressing this measure. He had ruthlessly forced a peerage on Mr. Hayes Fisher and had thus seriously shaken the old-time resistance of the Local Government Board. The main policy of the new Housing Act, as Dr. Addison framed and passed it through Parliament, was to throw the burden of housing on to the local authorities. The local authorities have not proved equal to the task. The strong wind which was blowing at the centre had not yet reached Slocum-in-Pogis and Little Puddleworth. The financial credit of the smaller local authorities was not equal to the new burden, and they were not powerful enough to face the great vested interests which control the raw material. Some of the great municipalities acted with a larger mind, but the small towns and rural districts held back. There was much talk and few houses. The result was that at the end of the year the Government had to make a fresh appeal to the private interests, adding a bait rising to £150 for every house built. Certainly no good-will was absent either on the part of the Government or the central departments. But this task of 1919 is handed on to 1920, and may require a vaster combination of energy and good will than has yet been brought to bear on it. What seemed to be wanted was that Mr. Lloyd George should bring to bear on this question some of the high patriotic enthusiasm which combined employers and workmen to face the Munition crisis of 1915. He, took the first step in this process by meeting the building trades in December, 1919.
After these greatest questions there came a series of minor measures to round off the Government’s social policy. The Ministry of Health Bill, introduced in February and passed during the Session, concentrated all the authorities responsible for public health into one great department, which will gradually function as a new centre for the preventive and curative measures suggested by the advance of medical science. The Land Acquisition Act, in spite of the criticism brought to bear on it, is already of immense value in enabling the new housing authorities to acquire land. It is now safe to say that the trouble of the land is the least of the questions involved in the matter of housing. The Land Settlement Act, passed to help place ex-soldiers on the land, quickened and extended the facilities for acquiring land for settlers either on small holdings or allotments. The Extension of Rents Act, passed in March, prolonged to one year after the war the freedom from a rise in rent granted to small householders, and the margin of rents covered by the Act was considerably raised in the course of the debate.[[142]] The Industrial Courts Act set up an industrial tribunal for the settlement of disputes, and, providing good-will gathers round it, may, in the end, give to us a good working substitute for compulsory arbitration. Towards the end of the Session Parliament passed a bold measure granting yet a further step in the extension of self-government to India, and in one day it generously increased the grants to old age pensioners. Mr. Lloyd George ended the Session by sketching in outline the bases of a new Irish settlement. Not a bad record for a Parliament which has been denounced in all the terms of the political vocabulary as reactionary, illiberal, profiteering, and even corrupt!