After Number 10: Former Prime Ministers in British Politics

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Understanding Governance series

Understanding Governance encompasses all theoretical approaches to the study of government and governance in advanced industrial democracies. It has three long-standing objectives: 1. To understand the process of change; 2. To develop theory to explain why change occurs; and 3. To set this change and its causes in comparative perspective. The series includes titles that adopt post-structural and post-modern approaches to political science and challenge such notions as hollowing-out, governance, core executives, policy networks and the new institutionalism. It also publishes material with traditional institutional and historical approaches to such topics as prime ministers, ministers, the civil service and government departments. All titles meet not only the conventional standard of theoretical and empirical rigour but also seek to address topics of broad current interest that open the field of study to new ideas and areas of investigation. Titles include: Ann Scott ERNEST GOWERS Plain Words and Forgotten Deeds Kevin Theakston AFTER NUMBER 10 Former Prime Ministers in British Politics

Titles previously published in the Transforming Government series include: Simon Bulmer, Martin Burch, Caitríona Carter, Patricia Hogwood and Andrew Scott BRITISH DEVOLUTION AND EUROPEAN POLICY-MAKING Transforming Britain to Multi-Level Governance Nicholas Deakin and Richard Parry THE TREASURY AND SOCIAL POLICY The Contest for Control of Welfare Strategy Neil C.M. Elder and Edward C. Page ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONTROL IN NEXT STEPS AGENCIES Oliver James THE EXECUTIVE AGENCY REVOLUTION IN WHITEHALL Public Interest Versus Bureau-Shaping Perspectives David Marsh, David Richards and Martin J. Smith CHANGING PATTERNS OF GOVERNANCE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM Reinventing Whitehall?

10.1057/9780230281387 - After Number 10, Kevin Theakston

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General Editor: R.A.W. Rhodes, Professor of Government, University of Tasmania and Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Australian National University

Iain McLean THE FISCAL CRISIS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM Edward C. Page and Vincent Wright (editors) FROM THE ACTIVE TO THE ENABLING STATE The Changing Role of Top Officials in European Nations

B. Guy Peters, R. A. W. Rhodes and Vincent Wright (editors) ADMINISTERING THE SUMMIT Administration of the Core Executive in Developed Countries R. A. W. Rhodes (editor) TRANSFORMING BRITISH GOVERNMENT Volume One: Changing Institutions Volume Two: Changing Roles and Relationships David Richards NEW LABOUR AND THE CIVIL SERVICE Reconstituting the Westminster Model Martin J. Smith THE CORE EXECUTIVE IN BRITAIN Kevin Theakston LEADERSHIP IN WHITEHALL Kevin Theakston (editor) BUREAUCRATS AND LEADERSHIP Patrick Weller, Herman Bakvis and R. A. W. Rhodes (editors) THE HOLLOW CROWN Countervailing Trends in Core Executives

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Hugh Pemberton POLICY LEARNING AND BRITISH GOVERNANCE IN THE 1960s

After Number 10 Kevin Theakston Professor of British Government, University of Leeds, UK



Former Prime Ministers in British Politics

© Kevin Theakston 2010 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

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To Breda


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Contents Acknowledgements

viii 1

2 Walpole to Shelburne

14

3 Addington to Melbourne

42

4 Peel to Rosebery

74

5 Salisbury to Asquith

107

6 Lloyd George to Chamberlain

126

7 Attlee to Douglas-Home

149

8 Heath to Callaghan

176

9 Thatcher to Blair

197

10 Comparative Perspectives

226

Notes

238

Index

263

vii



1 Introduction

I have incurred many debts in writing this book. I am very grateful for the help, advice and encouragement of colleagues at the University of Leeds who read and commented on various sections and chapters of this book: Dr Ed Gouge, Dr Tim Heppell and Dr David Seawright. Professor David Bell has helped my understanding of comparative aspects of this project. I tried out my ideas in a lecture to the North-West branch of the Historical Association in Manchester in January 2008, and in papers to the Political Studies Association annual conference at Swansea in April 2008 and to a workshop organised by the Political Leadership specialist group of the PSA held at Leeds in October 2008. Other participants in those sessions helped greatly with their feedback, comments and questions. I must also thank Palgrave’s anonymous reader, who made many useful comments and suggestions on my manuscript. I alone, of course, am responsible for the contents of the book. My biggest debt is to my family and to Breda Theakston. Kevin Theakston

viii



Acknowledgements

1

Sooner or later every prime minister becomes a former prime minister. From Sir Robert Walpole to Gordon Brown, Britain has had 52 prime ministers. There have been up to 2009, 51 former prime ministers. It is a small, exclusive ‘club’ – there have never been more than five former prime ministers alive at the same time, and there are currently just three living ‘members’ of the ‘club’ (Lady Thatcher, Sir John Major and Tony Blair). This book explores the experience of former prime ministers in Britain from the 18th century to the present day. What do they do after leaving the topmost office in British government? There is no fixed or predetermined role for former prime ministers. What they do after they leave office depends on their personal choices and on circumstances, including the reactions and attitudes of still-active politicians and of political parties to the former political and governmental leader. There is little in the way of a common pattern. ‘You are very ex as an ex-prime minister’, the former Conservative Cabinet minister Ken Clarke has said.1 The political waters can close quickly over the departed prime minister. Some largely disappear from the political stage after they retire. Others have a ‘second act’ and find a way to play some sort of continuing role in politics and public life. Sometimes it is a constructive role, but sometimes it can be the reverse. Some former prime ministers have enhanced their reputations through their post-Number 10 activities, but some have damaged their reputations. Success or failure in Number 10 as prime minister does not predict what may come afterwards. Indeed, some prime ministers with short and unsuccessful stints in office have gone on to have lengthy and successful post-Number 10 careers, while those higher up the ‘league table’ of prime-ministerial achievement may have quickly faded into the background on retirement. In a recent study of the parliamentary activity and interventions of former prime ministers, Peter Just argues that post-Second World War former prime ministers have been more active than their predecessors. Of the total of 2,575 parliamentary interventions by ex-prime ministers he 1



Introduction

logged between 1742 and 2001, 1,322 (51 per cent) came in the period 1955–2001 (covering Churchill and Attlee to Major). He identifies Callaghan as the most parliamentary-active former prime minister in British history, with 484 interventions (a remarkable 19 per cent of all post-prime-ministerial interventions since 1742 and 36 per cent of all of the post-war ones). A crucial factor is what he calls office-holding between Number 10 and the backbenches (apparently including being Leader of the Opposition or party leadership as well as other ministerial office): 82 per cent of all interventions are attributed to the 21 former prime ministers in that category since 1742, the rest accounting for only 18 per cent of interventions. (Nonoffice-holding former PMs account for an even smaller proportion – 8 per cent – of parliamentary interventions in the post-war period despite being half of the total number of post-war premiers in his study.) But there is considerable individual variation qualifying the sense of trends over time. Just four former PMs (Attlee, Home, Heath and Callaghan) account for 90 per cent of all the post-war parliamentary interventions. Three individuals (Peel, Rosebery and Lloyd George) between them account for 62 per cent of all the interventions in the period up to the Second World War. These seven former prime ministers made 77 per cent of all parliamentary interventions by former prime ministers.2 Just’s study is revealing but tells only a part of the story of the political and other roles played by former prime ministers. The book starts with Walpole because his experience of leaving office set an important precedent. Previously many of the leading ministers – unless they died – were impeached or threatened with prosecution and punishment in some way after they fell from power. In 1742 there were calls to impeach Walpole and an inquiry into his finances was made, but it soon ran into the sands – though action against him would have been justified.3 Later there was talk of impeaching Lord North (the prime minister who ‘lost’ the American colonies), Lord Aberdeen (after the Crimean war), and even Tony Blair (over Iraq) but these threats were never serious. The ‘club’ of ex-prime ministers is rarely one they really want to join. Few left Number 10 as happy, contented or fulfilled people, or at a time and in a manner of their own choosing. Some, like Baldwin, report they felt ‘an enormous relief’ when they left office. But they mostly have a deep need of the political game and of ‘the bustle of greatness’, and often find giving it up, or being brushed to one side, difficult and frustrating.4 They miss the Number 10 life-support system: the information flows and topsecret briefings, the expert and attentive staff of aides and advisers, the sense of being in the know and at the centre of things. James Callaghan once told Denis Thatcher, husband of the then prime minister, it was a ‘wonderful thing’ to be a former prime minister. ‘You go where you like. You have a wonderful time. Really good.’ ‘Can’t wait’, Mr. Thatcher replied, ‘can’t wait.’ But his wife did not see it that way: one of her closest aides,



2 After Number 10

Lord (Charles) Powell, said that after Margaret Thatcher left Number 10, ‘she never had a happy day’. ‘The telephone goes and immediately you think, Oh goodness me, the United Nations is sitting’, she said in a TV interview after her resignation. ‘Then you realize that it’s no longer you any more.’ Driving down Whitehall towards Westminster, she confessed she would be half-expecting the car to swing into Downing Street before realising that it would not do so.5 Some former prime ministers dream – however implausibly – of a comeback to Number 10. It is easy in Number 10 to succumb to ‘the illusion of indispensability’ – what David Marquand described as ‘that most insidious of all prime ministerial temptations’. This feeling leads on to what David Carlton called the ‘Chatham complex’ (‘I know that I can save this country and that no one else can’, as Pitt the Elder declared) – ‘such illusions are notoriously common among former prime ministers’, argues Carlton.6 But those who stay on as Leader of the Opposition after an election defeat often do not last long in that role. Nine 19th century premiers had two or more non-consecutive terms in the office. But only four premiers serving entirely in the 20th century managed to hang on to the party leadership after losing a general election and going into opposition, before then coming back for another term in Downing Street: Baldwin, MacDonald, Churchill and Wilson. This could conceivably happen again but it is an open question how far changes in the media, parties and the wider politics of leadership now mean that ‘when you’re finished, you’re finished for good’. Certainly, John Major seemed relieved to be able to fall on his sword and give up the party leadership immediately after his 1997 landslide election defeat. Some have more of a ‘hinterland’ than others – interests and activities beyond politics. ‘I think it is extremely foolish of politicians to be so embedded in politics that when the days end there is nothing in their life but looking back to what once they did and once they were’, John Major has said. ‘Don’t ever forget that you may suddenly leave politics, voluntarily or by compulsion at any time, and don’t wrap every aspect of your life around politics or you will regret it.’ Harold Macmillan made a similar point about the need to make a clean break, commenting ‘It is tempting, perhaps, but unrewarding to hang around the greenroom after final retirement from the stage.’7 However, the retirements of many ex-prime ministers are desolate, bitter and unhappy – many come across in the biographies and memoirs as sour, crabby and depressed rather than serene and contented. With others there is a glimpse of close and happy family circles (examples include Lord North, the Peels, the Douglas-Homes) and of the enjoyment of ‘real life’ after Number 10. When Baldwin retired in 1937, he is said to have resolved to make no political speeches, neither to speak to the man at the wheel nor to spit on the deck. But some find it difficult to be so forbearing toward their successors.



Introduction 3

(The last thing a new resident of Number 10 wants is the political equivalent of ‘back seat driving’ from the former occupant.) In the 1830s Grey seemed to regard his successor Melbourne as little more than an understudy who was not up to the job – his job – and became more and more resentful and critical as Melbourne developed his own policies. More recently Heath and Thatcher were examples of ‘how not to do it’ – the first isolating himself in his party by staging a ‘great sulk’, the second actively plotting against and trying to undermine her successor, helping to fuel the Tory party’s civil war of the 1990s. Another negative model was the charismatic Rosebery, who was thought still to have a brilliant future before him when he ceased to be prime minister in 1895 aged only 48, but who threw it away by his posturing, grandstanding, disloyalty and disengagement from the disciplines of organised party politics. Ex-prime ministers cannot have a constructive continuing role in British politics if they try to ‘go it alone’. Gladstone was thinking of the difficulties caused by Peel’s attempt to play an independent role in politics in the late-1840s after he left the premiership when he said, ‘former prime ministers are like untethered rafts drifting around harbours – a menace to shipping’.8 A few former prime ministers have come close to creating constitutional problems because of their closeness to the monarch of the time. In the 1760s Lord Bute (the first Scottish prime minister and perhaps the most unpopular PM ever) was suspected of having a ‘secret influence’ and playing a destabilising role as ‘the power behind the curtain’ with the young George III for several years after his short premiership. For a year or so after he stepped down in 1841, Melbourne and Queen Victoria kept in close touch, she filling him in on what the Peel government was up to and asking for advice, which he freely gave – eventually Palace advisers had to put a stop to these potentially dangerous exchanges. Later the Queen sent secret letters to Disraeli after he had left office, asking his opinions on foreign policy and commenting on her dealings with his successor Gladstone.

Back in government office after being prime minister ‘Anyone who has played the main stage of theatre land shouldn’t attempt to come back in provincial repertory’, Harold Macmillan once said. However, from the 18th century onwards 14 prime ministers have ‘come back’ and served in the governments of later administrations and under other prime ministers – over a quarter of our prime ministers. (In three of those cases they then went on to become prime minister for one final time, after which no other posts were held.) Lord Rosebery argued that to have an exprime minister in a Cabinet was ‘a fleeting and dangerous luxury’.9 But it is not that ‘fleeting’, for the cumulative post-prime-ministerial service of this group adds up to 79 years (30 per cent of the post-Walpole period). And for the prime ministers who made these appointments nor were they ‘luxuries’



4 After Number 10

but, rather, seen as essential steps to strengthen their governments in the political circumstances they faced. Anthony Trollope in his great political series the Palliser novels gave a fictitious example of a phenomenon that would have been well known to him (four former prime ministers appeared in the governments of successors in Number 10 during his lifetime). ‘Caesar could hardly have led a legion under Pompey’, protests the Duke of Omnium in the novel The Prime Minister (1876) when it is suggested he serves in his successor’s Cabinet after his government falls. Having stood on ‘the top rung of the ladder’, he thinks he could not ‘take a lower place without degradation’. Only after a few years do changing political and personal circumstances pitch him back into government, when he agrees to become Lord President of the Council in Mr. Monk’s Cabinet (in the follow-up novel The Duke’s Children [1880]).10 Some of the real-world prime-ministerial ‘retreads’ had had short tenures in Number 10, like Douglas-Home who went on to serve as Foreign Secretary 1970–74 and play a dignified elder-statesman role in the Conservative Party, or Lord Goderich (later Earl of Ripon), prime minister for only 130 days in the 1820s, who went on to serve in the Cabinets of the Whig Lord Grey and the Conservative Robert Peel in the 1830s and 1840s. Some were stopgap prime ministers who were not as weighty or ambitious as other figures on the political chessboard, and could afterwards be moved to less senior posts with little fuss. Then there were those periods when the political kaleidoscope had been shaken. Coalitions and realignments of parliamentary blocs and factions produced a number of these cases in the 18th century. In the mid-19th century Russell left Number 10 and served under Aberdeen and then Palmerston, before becoming prime minister himself again, in a period of instability and change in the party system. The 1930s saw both Baldwin and MacDonald rotating in and out of the premiership and the office of Lord President of the Council in the ‘National Government’ coalition. Other cases occurred during wartime – Balfour serving under Asquith and Lloyd George in the First World War (later holding office under Baldwin 1925–29), and Neville Chamberlain, after he was overthrown, serving in an important position in Churchill’s War Cabinet for five months until his death in 1940. There were only two cases of former prime ministers serving in other Cabinet positions in ‘normal’ peace time conditions of single-party government in the 20th century: Balfour (under Baldwin) in the 1920s and Douglas-Home (under Heath) in the 1970s. Sometimes these former premiers served in positions like Lord President of the Council or Lord Privy Seal – without a heavy administrative burden and with scope to offer sage advice and chair the odd committee, though the occupants can find themselves marginalised and ignored in what becomes a ‘position of distinguished insignificance’.11 Four former prime ministers



Introduction 5

served as Foreign Secretary (Wellington, Russell, Balfour, Home), and three as Home Secretary (North, Portland and Addington – the latter was Home Secretary for more than nine years after leaving the premiership). Wellington was Minister without Portfolio – and still a weighty voice in the Tory party – under Peel 1841–46 and, incredibly, also Commander-in-Chief of the Army from 1842 until his death in 1852 (continuing in that post under the Whig government that succeeded Peel’s). Some were more successful, more at home, and achieved more in these post-Number 10 ministerial positions than as prime minister. Balfour was a weak prime minister for three years, and much of his historical reputation rests on what he did in the 11 years he held government office after being evicted from Downing Street. This pattern of former prime ministers serving under their successors might have been even more common for there are at least seven others who were offered ministerial posts after they had ceased to be prime minister, but refused them. Grey rejected the chance of a come-back in 1835. Gladstone offered Russell a Cabinet post in 1866 (thinking he would be less trouble in the government than out of it), but he declined it. Lloyd George offered both Rosebery and Asquith posts in his wartime government, meeting with refusals. Churchill dangled various job offers before the aged Lloyd George in 1940 but the Welshman held back. At the height of the Suez crisis in 1956 Eden offered Churchill a seat in the Cabinet without portfolio – but the old man’s private secretary said he would not like ‘the opposite of the harlot’s prerogative’ (responsibility without power). When Callaghan succeeded Wilson in 1976, he offered him the Foreign Office, but Wilson had had enough and did not want to stay on. Heath wanted Thatcher to make him Foreign Secretary in 1979, but she had other ideas, offering him instead a job 3,000 miles away as Ambassador to the USA; he took the message but not that job. (Rosebery in 1906 and Lloyd George in 1940 also turned down the Washington embassy.)

Health and age factors Longevity and good health are essential ingredients for a successful postpremiership. Both Peel and Baldwin used to say that for health reasons no one should be prime minister for more than five years (in fact nearly half of our prime ministers have clocked up five or more years in the job); Major thought that eight years was long enough, after which it was usually ‘downhill’. Few leave Number 10 in as good physical shape as when they enter it: the premiership is and always has been gruelling and stressful. It has been said that prime ministers age at two or three times the normal rate of advancing years while they are at Number 10. On leaving office many are wonderfully rejuvenated, though others never really fully recover their energy levels and capabilities. Baldwin admitted that when he finally



6 After Number 10

quit he was ‘so tired that I could do nothing and think of nothing for months and it was over a year before I felt normal’. Major said it had taken him a year to recover from the physical strain of being prime minister, and he was only in his mid-fifties. ‘The thing about the job’, Tony Blair once said, ‘is its utter relentlessness. It never leaves you. Never. It is emotionally, physically and mentally draining.’12 Gladstone once said that 60 should be the maximum age for prime ministers (although he was 82 when he started his fourth premiership). On the other hand Callaghan, when asked the question was there ‘an age when a prime minister should consider that he is past it?’, replied, ‘There’s no age. It’s a case of mental condition.’13 But age has a bearing on the length and on the scope and nature of a prime minister’s post-Number 10 activities. Seven prime ministers died in office, two as old men but five in their forties or fifties. A further nine died within two-and-a-half years of leaving Number 10 (most of these in their seventies). The longest-lived prime minister was Callaghan, who died a day before his 93rd birthday in 2005; the shortest-lived was the Duke of Devonshire who died in 1764 aged only 44. The average age on leaving Number 10 of all ex-prime ministers was 61, the average age at death was 73, and so the average post-premiership or retirement was 12 years long. Advances in health and medicine help explain why the average age at death of 18th century prime ministers was 64, of 19th century prime ministers 74, and of 20th century premiers 81. Four 20th century prime ministers made it into their nineties (Churchill, Macmillan, Home and Callaghan), and only one died in his sixties (Bonar Law). The longest post-premiership was 41 years (Grafton – who was only 34 when he left Number 10 in 1770), the shortest only 17 days (CampbellBannerman, who was the only premier to die in Number 10, in 1908). Of the 17 who enjoyed more than 15 years of retirement, only five were over 60 when they left office. No one who left Number 10 aged over 70 had a post-premiership of more than 12 years; most of that group enjoyed pretty short retirements. Exhausted by work and illness, some prime ministers become old men before their time – such as William Pitt the Younger and Lord Liverpool. Some hit the bottle when they leave office – such as Melbourne (who would drink three bottles of wine a day) and Asquith. But others stay remarkably vigorous into old age. Palmerston, who died in office in 1865 aged 81, kept his physical vitality until a late stage: jumping over railings as an old man and getting into scrapes with young ladies. Lloyd George fathered a child with his long-term mistress (and later second wife) when aged 66. Gladstone was 84 when he finally left office in 1894 – older as prime minister than any other man before or since. In contrast to, say, the gout-ridden and semi-invalid Lord Derby, and to the far-from-robust Disraeli, Gladstone had exceptional physical resilience and stamina (he was still chopping down trees into his eighties: ‘the forest laments in order that Mr. Gladstone



Introduction 7

8 After Number 10

Honours So far, not counting Tony Blair, only nine prime ministers ended their days as plain ‘Mr.’, and never accepted a peerage or knighthood (despite, in some cases, repeated offers); four of the nine died in office as commoners. The nine are: Henry Pelham, George Grenville, Pitt the Younger, Spencer Perceval, Canning, Gladstone, Bonar Law, MacDonald, and Chamberlain. From the mid-19th century until comparatively recently, a hereditary earldom was the ‘going rate’ for prime ministers who were not already peers. From Sir Robert Walpole (who also received an earldom) to Sir John Major, 29 prime ministers or former prime ministers became Knights of the Garter. The KG, which is limited to a group of 24, has since 1945 become almost routine for former prime ministers (only Macmillan and DouglasHome – who was a KT [Knight of the Thistle] instead – not receiving it), but before then it had been rather more selectively bestowed. MacDonald refused to go to the Lords and Blair is reported to have said that the House of Lords was ‘not [his] scene’ (though he may one day become ‘Sir Tony’). Other Labour ex-prime ministers, such as Attlee and Wilson, positively delighted in accumulating honours. Churchill was offered a dukedom when he retired in 1955 but only after discreet enquiries by the Palace confirmed he would refuse it. Macmillan was the last former prime minister to accept an hereditary earldom, in 1984, more than 20 years after stepping down. Alec Douglas-Home gave up an earldom to become PM and was the first ex-prime minister to go to the Lords with a life peerage. Perhaps because they have made and traded so many peerages, some prime ministers have been rather disdainful about honours and cynical about the honours system. Melbourne himself refused both an earldom and the Garter, and was dismissive about what he called ‘gee-gaws’ and other men’s grasping for baubles. Peel (who inherited his baronetcy) refused all other honours and distinctions. (In his five years as PM he had created only five peerages, a record of parsimony unequalled before or since.) Tony Benn once called the House of Lords ‘the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians’, but its advantage for former prime ministers is that it offers a recognised platform, enabling them to air their views and contribute to political debate. Some have been conscientious and respected



may perspire’, quipped Lord Randolph Churchill).14 In the 20th century Macmillan stayed in good mental shape far longer than his skilfully deceptive ‘old man’ act might have suggested. Eden’s doctors told him that unless he resigned he could be dead within six months – he then when on to live another 20 years after stepping down. In actuarial terms John Major (born in 1943) and Tony Blair (born in 1953) – both of whom left the premiership in their mid-fifties – can expect to be around for a while still.

peers, attending regularly and making some effective interventions (e.g. Callaghan); while others did not attend or speak often or make much of a mark there (e.g. Baldwin, Eden). When they reach the Lords, former prime ministers often have a low opinion of the place. Asquith thought it was ‘an impossible audience … like speaking by torchlight to corpses in a charnelhouse’. To Balfour, it was ‘like talking to a lot of tombstones’. Callaghan said it was ‘heaven’s waiting room’. Macmillan called it ‘the morgue’; the Lords was ‘not worth belonging to’, he once said – though he enjoyed his last chance to strut the political stage and made some witty, memorable and mischievous attacks on Mrs. Thatcher’s policies.15 One consequence of a possible move to a reformed and elected second chamber might be to remove the platform provided by the Lords for former prime ministers (and other retired office holders).

Putting pen to paper ‘A British politician’, Trevor Lloyd wrote, ‘starts a successful ministerial career by taking the Privy Council oath of secrecy and ends it by signing a publisher’s contract for a volume of memoirs.’ Tony Blair has negotiated a deal worth £4.6 million for his memoirs; Thatcher’s brought her in £3.5 million. The majority of the 20th century’s former prime ministers told (and sold) their stories. MacDonald and Baldwin shied away from doing so, leaving the field free to their critics and enemies – a mistake not made by others. Lloyd George, Churchill, Eden and Wilson did not write full autobiographies but published detailed, multi-volume histories, memoirs and self-justifications. Macmillan’s six-volumes of memoirs – based on his diaries – totalled 4,000 pages. Major and Heath needed ‘only’ 700 pages, Thatcher 1500 pages (in two volumes). Alec Home’s slight and anecdotal book The Way the Wind Blows was a surprising best-seller, but the modern norm is more on the door-stopper scale. It is likely that more copies are bought than read from cover to cover. Even the authors are sometimes honest enough to acknowledge their books can be hard going. ‘The prime ministerial memoir is not a distinguished literary genre’, says Michael Cockerell. ‘Most since the war have been dull, pompous or self-serving. Some have managed to achieve the treble.’ ‘Political memoirs are the very devil’, quipped Ian McIntyre. ‘They mostly read like Keesing’s Archives without the jokes.’16 No former prime minister has in fact written anything about politics as compelling, revealing and fun to read as, say, Alan Clark’s Diaries. Before the 20th century few former prime ministers (or indeed other politicians) wrote autobiographies or memoirs. There is only one published autobiography from an 18th century prime minister (Grafton), and that was published (in 1898) nearly 90 years after he died. Though many Victorian politicians kept diaries (including Gladstone), virtually none published one.



Introduction 9

10 After Number 10

Money matters Pensions for former prime ministers were introduced only in 1937 at the rate of £2,000 per year (equivalent to over £70,000 today). Asquith (who was short of money in retirement) and Baldwin (who was not) had both opposed pensions for former prime ministers, though Asquith had called for the PM’s salary to be higher and Baldwin had argued it was important for a former prime minister to be ‘independent’. Ramsay MacDonald backed the idea of a pension linked to some sort of continued public or state service by an ex-prime minister, though he was vague about the details. The Times in 1924 supported pensions for former prime ministers to avoid the danger of them having to money-grub through ‘dubious business or second-rate journalism’. Speaking for the government in the debate on the legislation establishing the prime-ministerial pension, Sir John Simon noted ‘there are many possible sources of income which are open to lesser men which he [the former prime minister] cannot suitably exploit’.18 In 1972 the pension was fixed at 15/40ths of the prime minister’s salary and, following a recommendation from the Top Salaries Review Body in 1988, from 1991 all former PMs were entitled to a pension equal to half the PM’s ministerial salary, immediately on leaving office, however long they had served (so worth £66,000 pa in 2009). Since 1991 they have also received a special allowance (currently £90,000 pa) – the ‘Public Duties Cost Allowance’ – to help fund an office and secretarial support. Churchill had had unique official support as an ex-PM, with a Foreign Office diplomat seconded to be his private secretary, though Churchill reimbursed the government for the cost of his salary. A government-provided car and driver for all ex-PMs was made available from 1975. They, at least, do not need to share the shock of some former ministers who, it is said, realise they are out of office only when they get into the backs of their cars and they do not set off. In January 2008 the Review Body on Top Salaries suggested the special prime-ministerial pension could no longer be justified. The argument for it had been ‘it would not be dignified’ for the prime minister to ‘seek employment after leaving office’. But – with Lady Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair clearly in mind – it was now the case that a former prime minister



Gladstone had the opportunity – through the offer of a huge sum from American publishers – to become the first prime minister to make a lot of money by writing about his experiences in politics and ministerial office, but he turned down the chance.17 His great rival Disraeli wrote novels, which Gladstone thought ‘trash’, but they were popular and commercial successes (much to the disbelief of professional novelists like Trollope) and they had some autobiographical elements.

could ‘expect to have a career, or a portfolio of earnings opportunities on leaving office’ and was ‘unlikely to suffer hardship’. In future, it proposed, former prime ministers should be part of the regular ministerial scheme, receiving three months’ ‘severance pay’ and drawing a ministerial pension dependent on length of service and contributions. Legislation would be needed to give effect to these recommendations. But although it meant he would probably be foregoing a substantial sum of money, Gordon Brown announced he would immediately accept the proposals and would – when his turn came – take a pension on the new basis.19 Half the prime ministers in the 18th and 19th centuries did not choose to live in Number 10 Downing Street, preferring their own London homes, and so did not experience major domestic upheaval on quitting office. However, since 1902 all prime ministers except for Wilson in his 1974–76 government have lived ‘above the shop’ in Number 10. In the 1970s the civil service was asked to look into the possibility of buying an official residence for Leaders of the Opposition to deal with the problem that some of the prime ministers suddenly removed from Number 10 do not actually have anywhere to live. Asquith had rented out his old house; Alec Home in 1964 and Heath in 1974 were put up in other people’s flats until proper London accommodation could be sorted out for them; Wilson had no London home to move into when he unexpectedly lost the 1970 election. ‘We bundle Prime Ministers out of their residence [in Number 10]’, it was argued in 1974, ‘rather as if the bailiff had arrived for non-payment of rent without even a county court hearing’. Officials in the Civil Service Department prepared a report listing all the objections and problems, and the idea was then quietly buried.20 Terrorism threats mean that former prime ministers continue to receive police and security protection after they leave office. Sir Edward Heath was continually protected until his death in 2005. Lady Thatcher and Sir John Major have armed protection teams, and security for Tony Blair (including a 16-strong personal protection team and round-the-clock guards at his houses in London and in the country) is reported to cost £2 million a year. The Home Office’s Royal and VIP Executive Committee reviews security risks and keeps these arrangements under review. In earlier periods, Churchill had received security protection until his death in 1965, but Attlee’s protection was ended in November 1951 and Eden’s protection appears to have been withdrawn around 1959. Both Wilson and Callaghan apparently received protection so long as they remained MPs after leaving Number 10, their security cover being withdrawn when they went to the Lords, in 1983 and 1987 respectively. (Leaked documents show concerns about a Jehova’s Witness managing to make it past the officers guarding Callaghan’s farm, reaching the house and engaging the former PM in conversation, and the alarm system at the farm being frequently set off by the pigs!)21



Introduction 11

Many former prime ministers were privately wealthy and able to retire to their country estates. Walpole amassed a large personal fortune in office. Bute (in the 18th century) and Rosebery (in the 19th) were among the wealthiest men in the country and married fabulously rich heiresses. When Rosebery died in 1929, he left £1.7 million – the equivalent of nearly £60 million in today’s money. Eleven of the 18 former prime ministers who have died since 1900 would be counted today as millionaires on that basis, including Lloyd George and Churchill who both left public life substantially wealthier than when they entered it (helped by lucrative publishing deals and private benefactors). Some prime ministers and former prime ministers have had money troubles. Both Pitts – father (Chatham) and son – died with massive debts that were paid off by public funds by Parliament. King George III quietly lent money to Lord North (who finally inherited his estates and fortune only two years before he died), and Queen Victoria loaned money to Melbourne who was financially rather disorganised and always thought he was harder up than he really was. Neither Addington nor Russell were well off and were helped-out by being granted royal ‘grace and favour’ houses to live in. Disraeli’s finances were dangerously rackety for much of his life but were in reasonable shape in his later years, with his literary earnings, some large bequests and help from a shadowy benefactor. Asquith’s financial position was so bad that some of his friends organised an appeal for a fund to pay his debts and give him a private pension for the last few years of his life; he left only £9,345 on his death in 1928. Attlee lived modestly on his pension, the House of Lords attendance allowance and whatever he could make from lectures and journalism. He left only £7,295 in his will – the smallest sum left by any of the 20th century’s former PMs. Until Tony Blair Labour former-premiers like Attlee, Wilson and Callaghan do not seem to have acquired lucrative directorships or business appointments as some Conservatives had. In the 1920s, however, Lloyd George made large sums of money from international lectures in the same way as contemporary ex-PMs like Thatcher, Major and Blair. The latest development is for former prime ministers to set up foundations to provide a base and a platform for continuing involvement with political and public issues. Thatcher was the first to set up her own foundation to try to secure her legacy and propagate her ideas (but funds ran out and it closed down in the UK in 2005). Blair set up a Sports Foundation and an Inter-faith Foundation. By seeking to operate as an active and roving figure on the world stage, Blair may also be carving out a new role for a former British prime minister, though one with some obvious contemporary international parallels (as Chapter 10 shows). The former MP and journalist Matthew Parris asserted in 2007 that ‘no British prime minister in history has ever done anything seriously



12 After Number 10

Introduction 13


worthwhile or interesting after leaving Downing Street’. A Guardian editorial in 2008 echoed his claim, saying that ‘No British prime minister has ever found significance in a new role. Their best times are always behind them.’22 Both were wrong. There may not be a clear or established role for former British prime ministers, but – as this book will show – they have done plenty of worthwhile, interesting and significant things in the years after they have left Number 10.


2

Robert Walpole (resigned 11 February 1742) Britain’s first and longest-serving prime minister (having held the post of First Lord of the Treasury for almost 21 years), Walpole left office on 11 February 1742. He had already ceased to be an MP, having a few days earlier accepted a peerage and been created Earl of Orford. He had also obtained from the King a pension of £4,000 a year (worth over £450,000 a year in today’s money), though Walpole chose not to apply for his first payment for two years, perhaps because it might have aroused controversy in the immediate aftermath of his resignation. He continued to live in Number 10 Downing Street for several more months before he moved out to take up residence in a house in Arlington Street in St James’s as his new London base. Sixty-five years old, he was to live for another three years as ‘the ex-minister’.1 Walpole’s long hold on power had been weakening for four or five years before his fall, as he had encountered political and personal setbacks and blows. He had lost an important royal ally with the death of Queen Caroline in 1737. The death in childbirth of his second wife (and former mistress), Maria Skerret, in 1738 had left him devastated and depressed. Internal tensions and divisions had been growing in the Cabinet and the government, and Walpole’s hold over the House of Commons was slipping. That against his wishes war had been declared with Spain, showed how much his power was waning, and the ineffective conduct of that war further sapped his popularity and influence. He was feeling his age and was frequently ill with gout and the stone. It seems that he would have liked to quit in 1740 but the King insisted he must remain in office. Lack of agreement on how to force him out or who should replace him kept him safe for a while, but his enemies and rivals could not be held at bay indefinitely. The 1741 general election cut his parliamentary majority, and as disgruntled ministers began to put out feelers and make overtures to the opposition, and as narrow margins and defeats in a series of early parliamentary 14



Walpole to Shelburne

votes showed that he had lost the confidence of the House of Commons, Walpole recognised that it was time to throw in the towel. King George II had burst into tears at the audience when Walpole took leave of him as prime minister. He had been so anxious to retain Walpole that he had authorised an approach to the Prince of Wales, offering to pay his debts and raise his allowance by £50,000 a year in exchange for support and the parliamentary votes he could influence. The Prince had refused. The ex-prime minister remained high in royal regard and confidence. The King made it clear he still wanted and valued Walpole’s advice, and continued privately to consult him, sometimes by letter and sometimes, it is claimed, in quiet meetings set up in a ‘safe house’ between Walpole and the King’s ‘confidential page of the back stairs’. Jeremy Black judges that Walpole’s influence over the King after his resignation was ‘considerable’. Contemporaries saw him as a ‘Minister behind the curtain’. His influence with the King was thrown in on the side of Pelham, his former protégé, in his struggles and rivalry with Pulteney (Earl of Bath) and Carteret over the next few years.2 When the King offered office to Pulteney, he made it a condition that Walpole should be ‘screened from all future resentments’, something Walpole’s old enemy rejected while assuring the monarch that he was not a ‘man of blood’. Walpole feared prosecution after leaving office and seems to have had many of his papers burnt. For him it was no idle threat, for earlier in his career he had had first-hand experience of political vengeance, spending some time in the Tower of London on corruption charges in 1712, and then in 1715 playing a leading role in the proceedings against the former Tory ministers Oxford (who spent two years in the Tower) and Bolingbroke (who fled the country in fear of his life). His allies rallied round to protect him, and in negotiations with the opposition about the formation of a new government and the distribution of posts, the Pelhams insisted that when Walpole left office he ‘be attended with honour and security’. Nevertheless a select committee was set up to investigate his conduct of the administration over the previous ten years, though Henry Pelham and Speaker Onslow were able to influence the selection of its membership, keeping off some of the ex-prime minister’s most bitter enemies and including some loyalists. It made little headway in investigating allegations of corruption, misuse of funds and interference in elections, however, because key witnesses – including Walpole’s lieutenants and aides in the staff of the Treasury – refused to answer questions or testify against him (one was bought off with a peerage and another had a spell in jail rather than spill the beans). The House of Lords then threw out an opposition bill to indemnify witnesses who would give evidence against Walpole. The investigation soon fizzled out and in December 1742 an attempt to set up another committee to go after Walpole was easily defeated. Ministerial obstruction, the continued strength of his supporters, behind-the-scenes



Walpole to Shelburne 15

deals, and the reluctance of some former enemies (like the Earl of Bath) to go all out for his blood saved Walpole from prosecution and allowed him to retire in peace.3 The possibility of a return to office cropped up occasionally. At the end of 1742 some MPs were said to be sorry they had voted against him and would be willing to see him back in. In January 1743, according to his son Horace Walpole, there was talk of him being made a Duke and coming back to head the ministry. But Horace believed ‘nothing could prevail on him to return hither’. Walpole in fact had ‘no hope or expectation of returning to power himself’, as Henry Pelham’s biographer notes, and he saw Pelham as his heir apparent and natural successor.4 Walpole remained involved in politics after his fall – ‘an important figure, though necessarily in the background’, according to Jonathan Oates. He kept in close touch with Henry Pelham and the Duke of Newcastle and received political reports and confidential information from them; during a visit to Houghton Hall, Walpole’s country house, in 1743 Pelham read official dispatches with the former prime minister. Walpole wanted to see his political legacy and system maintained, the Whigs kept in power, the Tories kept out and his enemies confounded. He advised Pelham on political strategy and tactics, on parliamentary management and patronage, and on where to look for factional support, with the aim of outsmarting the former opposition Whigs, even though Pulteney (Bath) and Carteret had come into the new government formed under the nominal leadership of the Earl of Wilmington. In 1742 Pelham had refused to take either of Walpole’s offices (as First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer). But when Wilmington died, Walpole – wanting to keep the key levers of power out of the Earl of Bath’s hands – successfully urged Pelham to become First Lord of the Treasury (and advised the King to appoint him). Pelham largely followed Walpole’s advice. Walpole did not try to undermine Pelham (in the way that some later ex-prime ministers turned against their successors), and his support, belief and trust in the younger man helped him to gain and consolidate power.5 Walpole’s more direct, public political role after his resignation was more limited. His interventions and speeches in House of Lords debates were few. In January 1744 he is credited with playing a major role in rallying support and lobbying behind the scenes in both Houses to have the continued payment of British subsidies for Hanoverian troops carried. The following month he made an effective speech calling for support of the Hanoverian dynasty and arguing that fears of a Jacobite/French invasion scare needed to be taken seriously. Later that year, when the disputes over foreign policy and the power struggle between the Pelhams and Carteret came to the boil, Walpole (in his last political intervention) advised the King to back the Pelhams and the Cabinet majority, and Carteret was forced out.6



16 After Number 10

Walpole found the solitude of retirement dull and dreary. He had been in parliament and in politics for 40 years, and in ministerial office for most of that time, experiencing, as Coxe noted, ‘a life of unremitting activity’ and ‘political exertion’. The splendid library at Houghton was no substitute: ‘I have led a life of business so long’, he said, ‘that I have lost my taste for reading.’ When one of his sons was preparing to read something to him, he ordered: ‘O! do not read history, for that I know must be false.’ There was his large art collection of over 400 paintings to enjoy, however (later sold by his debt-ridden heirs to Catherine the Great for the Hermitage in St. Petersburg). But his health was not now good enough for him to pursue the country pursuits of riding and hunting he had previously enjoyed. He would travel round his estate in his carriage, looking over his land and plantations. He wrote that ‘the oaks, the beeches, the chestnuts, seem to contend which shall best please the lord of the manor. They cannot deceive, they will not lie.’ His paintings, he sighed, ‘expect nothing in return which I cannot give’. But no one was fooled by such talk. As Edward Pearce puts it, ‘retreat [to Houghton in Norfolk] was for intervals between politics and politics; as a fixed condition it was intolerable’.7 Walpole had left office, as A.J.P. Taylor pointed out, ‘markedly wealthier than when he had entered it’. Over the years he had used and abused his government offices to amass (and spend) a large personal fortune. Starting as a country gentleman with an estate worth about £2,000 a year, he had become ‘one of the greatest magnates in the country’. He had built a magnificent palace at Houghton, and lived and entertained extravagantly. ‘He was very rich’, as Pearce puts it, ‘probably more in assets than cash’. He died with debts of £40–50,000 (equivalent to around £4–5 million today), but his estate was by then worth around £8,000 a year (perhaps £900,000 today); J.H. Plumb argued the debts were of ‘no great significance in relation to Walpole’s total estate’.8 Not long after he left the premiership, Walpole’s health started to deteriorate. He was ill in 1743 and by 1744 was suffering more or less continuous pain from kidney stones, with internal haemorrhaging and blood in his urine. After a terrible, jolting carriage journey to London in November 1744 (called to town by the King, who wanted his advice), his condition worsened. His doctors’ treatment made things worse, their medicines splintering the stone(s), which then lacerated his bladder. He was in constant pain in his last few weeks, sedated with large doses of opium, before dying of kidney failure, aged 68, on 18 March 1745 at his house in London. He was buried at Houghton.9 Walpole would not be the last former prime minister to miss the excitements and challenges of active political life and to complain about the ‘many tedious hours in my present retirement’.10 But he had not been completely sidelined or ignored or banished to the outer darkness. He had finished up in the House of Lords, not the Tower of London. It had not




18 After Number 10

Earl of Wilmington (died in office 2 July 1743) The first of the seven British prime ministers to have died in office and so not have a post-premiership, Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, was two or three years older than Walpole (his exact date of birth is not known, but usually recorded as 1673 or 1674) and so aged 68 or 69 when he became First Lord of the Treasury in 1742. He was really a stopgap, compromise figure and the titular head of a ministry dominated by others (chiefly the Secretary of State, Carteret). Elderly and ill with the stone (kidney stones) when he took office, he served only one year and 136 days before suddenly dying, aged around 70, on 2 July 1743 at his house in St James’s Square in London. It seems he would not have anyway lasted much longer in that role, as plans had been laid to replace him as First Lord with Henry Pelham at the start of the next parliamentary session. He had never married (though he was said to have fathered several illegitimate children), and his large fortune passed to his nephew, the Earl of Northampton. He was buried in Warwickshire. Following Wilmington’s death, there was a gap of 56 days before Henry Pelham succeeded him on 27 August 1743 – the longest interval between administrations in the history of the premiership. (The other three longest intervals also followed cases where the prime minister died in office: 28 days in 1812 [PercevalLiverpool], 23 days in 1827 [Canning-Goderich], and 19 days in 1806 [Pitt-Lord Grenville].)11

Henry Pelham (died in office 6 March 1754) Pelham was one of the 18th century’s most successful, if unspectacular, prime ministers: Walpole’s chosen heir, a capable and pragmatic administrator and parliamentary manager, and a skilful political balancer who provided stable government and whose tenure of ten years and 191 days in the premiership has been exceeded by only seven other holders of the office. He died at his London house, in Arlington Street, Piccadilly, on 6 March 1754, aged 59. Like many busy middle-aged politicians, Pelham is commonly said to have eaten too much and exercised too little. He was seriously ill in 1748 (a severe attack of shingles) and thereafter his health



been a long post-premiership but Walpole had got out in one piece, as it were, had secured a succession to his taste and a continuation of his policies and his regime, and had exercised an important influence over political affairs. Not all his successors would be so influential in retirement. However – the first prime minister and the first ex-prime minister – he had helped to stabilise politics and the political system in a way that allowed him and those who came after him to play a role and have a life after Number 10.

declined. In the summer of 1753 he fell ill with erysipelas, a skin disorder, going to Scarborough to drink the waters, but in December he became seriously ill again with the disease, making an apparent recovery and transacting government business in January and February before suffering a relapse. His death came as a great shock to the political world, his brother and Cabinet colleague (and successor), the Duke of Newcastle, being so overwhelmed and grief-stricken that he shut himself away for several days, refusing to see anyone. Unusually for a politician in that era, Pelham displayed a ‘disinterested integrity’ and had not used his government offices for personal enrichment. He is often described as having died ‘poor’, but these things are relative: he had had an income of about £3,000 a year from his estates and £11,000 from his ministerial offices. He left a personal estate at death of about £15,000 but legacies and debts of £22,000, forced his executors to sell land.12

Duke of Devonshire (resigned 29 June 1757) The fourth Duke of Devonshire was prime minister for less than eight months (November 1756 to June 1757) and was only 37 years old when he left that office. He continued to serve in government for five more years and under two successors before his political career ended. He died on 2 October 1764 at the age of 44, the youngest to die of Britain’s prime ministers. Head of one of the great Whig aristocratic families, Devonshire seems to have been in politics largely out of a sense of duty (to his class, his King and his country) rather than because of any driving sense of personal ambition for power and high office. Amiable, honourable, straightforward, an honest broker, commonsensical, un-self seeking, and somewhat above the fray, he had been a stop-gap, nominal prime minister – and had seen himself as such – holding the fort while stronger political personalities (Pitt, Newcastle, Fox) manoeuvred and negotiated to form a more stable administration. Everyone knew that William Pitt was the real centre of power during Devonshire’s short-lived ministry. He was not unhappy to leave the premiership, having said he had taken it on upon the basis ‘that he would retain the Treasury but till some new system should be completed’.13 A strong supporter of Henry Pelham and of the Duke of Newcastle, Devonshire had been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland during Newcastle’s first government and had no difficulty in serving under Newcastle again when he returned to office in June 1757. He had no desire for ‘effective office’ say the editors of The Devonshire Diary, and the post he accepted was that of Lord Chamberlain.14 One of the most senior and important Royal Household and Court figures, the Lord Chamberlain is today (and since the 1920s) a non-political appointment, but up until 1782 the post was of




Cabinet rank. Two other prime ministers – the Duke of Newcastle and the Duke of Portland – also held the post of Lord Chamberlain, but in both cases it was as their first step on the ministerial ladder; Devonshire is the only person to have filled the post after being prime minister. He had a seat in the Cabinet, and some involvement and influence in decision-making, but was not a central figure, being described by Schweizer as ‘an onlooker rather than a principal actor in the political arena’ and by Howat as ‘a political supernumerary’. His political influence, Howat says, ‘lay in his family standing and in his relations with Newcastle, which remained close for the rest of his life’.15 With the accession of George III in October 1760 and the rise of Bute, the new king’s favourite, who became a Secretary of State in March 1761, Newcastle’s days were numbered. Devonshire persuaded him not to resign, and acted as an intermediary when his relations with Pitt became rocky. But in May 1762 Newcastle did quit and Bute became prime minister. Devonshire stayed on as Lord Chamberlain but, to show his support for his old patron Newcastle, refused to attend Cabinet and Privy Council meetings, an impossible situation that could not long continue. He refused a summons by the King to a Cabinet Council to discuss peace terms with Spain in October 1762, after which the King’s coach overtook Devonshire’s on the way to London. The suspicious monarch thought that the Duke was on his way to cabal against him and to resign office. He was then dismissed from his post as Lord Chamberlain. Shortly afterwards in a bitter snub the King personally struck out Devonshire’s name from the list of Privy Councillors – he remains the only prime minister ever to have been dismissed from the Privy Council. Later, in a further show of royal displeasure, he was dismissed from his position as Lord Lieutenant of Derbyshire, an office that had been in his family for the previous half a century without interruption. Devonshire’s last appearance on the political stage came when he took part in the opposition to the Cider Tax, the controversy around which led to Bute’s resignation in April 1763. By then he was in poor and deteriorating health, having been ill with fever in 1761 and again the following year, and suffering from palsy. In 1764 he had a stroke and went to Spa, in Germany, to recuperate but died there.

Duke of Newcastle (resigned 26 May 1762) Newcastle had an extraordinarily long political career, spanning half a century, nearly all of which – bar five or six years – he spent in ministerial office. He had his first post (in 1717) in his early twenties, was a key figure in the Cabinets of Walpole and Henry Pelham (his brother), served twice as First Lord of the Treasury (1754–56 and 1757–62), and finished as Lord Privy Seal under Rockingham (1765–66) while in his early seventies. Only



20 After Number 10

in January 1768, in the last year of his life, did he finally announce his retirement from politics. Although he is usually listed as having two terms as prime minister, in his second stint as First Lord of the Treasury Newcastle was not really a prime minister in the sense of commanding the government, for he shared power in a coalition with William Pitt who, as Secretary of State, was the ministry’s driving force, directing the nation’s war effort during the Seven Years War, while Newcastle dealt with patronage matters, parliamentary management and public finances. With the accession of George III in 1760 – who did not like or trust Newcastle – his power was even more curtailed by Bute’s rise to power as the royal favourite. Newcastle’s old friend and colleague, Lord Hardwicke, had advised the Duke that the death of George II would be a good time to retire, but politics was the stuff of life to Newcastle and he could and would not quit. Pitt resigned in October 1761 and power and influence drained away from Newcastle, who was increasingly isolated in the Cabinet and was in effect levered out of office by Bute, who replaced him as prime minister. The old Duke wept as he handed over the seals of office at his final audience with the young King and refused the offer of a pension – although, given his financial circumstances, the money would have been useful. Newcastle was almost 69 years old when he resigned in 1762 and he went on to live another six and a half years. He spent the next three years (1762–65) in opposition, which proved a frustrating and dispiriting experience as well as a fairly novel one for him – and Hardwicke warned him that opposition was a ‘new trade to learn at a late hour’.16 Bute tried to lure him back into office within a few months of his resignation, but Newcastle refused to be captured and neutralised in that way by a ministry he wanted to see ousted. He made some blunders, as when in the autumn of 1762 he called upon those of his supporters still holding office to resign and saw an embarrassingly small number heed him, many choosing to hang on to their posts and abandon their former loyalties. Worse followed when the government retaliated by carrying out a big purge of Pelhamites from office, throwing Newcastle’s party into disarray, and further humiliated the Duke by stripping him of his lord lieutenancies and other honorific offices. Although allies would be needed to regain power, the understanding Newcastle and Pitt came to in 1763 (Pitt planned to offer Newcastle a Cabinet position without official responsibilities had he formed a government that year) broke down in 1764. The deaths of some of Newcastle’s friends – Hardwicke and the Duke of Devonshire – were blows, and he began to feel ever more lonely as a survivor of the Whig ‘Old Corps’. He was in no sense ‘leader of the opposition’ – but was a leading figure in the opposition to Bute and then to Grenville’s government, often hosting important meetings at his grand houses in London (Newcastle House) or in the country




(Claremont in Surrey), while a younger generation of politicians was coming forward. Newcastle wanted to get back into office but sought an influential elderstatesman position and did not want to be First Lord again. He was too old, the financial responsibilities would be too much for him, and he had not been a very good prime minister when he had the job – indecisive and not good at decision-taking. His strengths and interests lay in boroughmongering, electioneering, and the management and manipulation of patronage. He loved being busy, the ‘buzz’ of politics and intrigue, being on the inside of things. Although a notorious and fussy hypochondriac, he was, as his biographer Reed Browning says, usually healthy (though he had a recurring intestinal problem) and able to enjoy outdoor activity until the last year of his life, when he was crippled by serious illness. He had the vitality of a much younger man: ‘repose offered no attraction to an active man who had never cultivated the arts of leisure and solitude’.17 When a Whig ministry was formed in July 1765 under Lord Rockingham, Newcastle (aged 72) returned to office. Most of his Cabinet colleagues were now several decades younger than him and he had been a power in the land and a Secretary of State before the new prime minister (aged just 35) had even been born. Newcastle became Lord Privy Seal, the post carrying no official duties, but he was given special responsibility for ecclesiastical affairs and patronage, dealing directly with the King on church appointments. He was restored to his position as Lord Lieutenant of Nottingham and Steward of Sherwood Forest. He had hoped to be able to exercise a behind-the-scenes influence over ‘our young ministers’ but, to his dismay, quickly found himself ‘isolated from his … colleagues, his counsel unsought and his sensibilities unrespected’. ‘He tried his hand at meddling in the departments of others’, but his advice was spurned and he was ‘rebuked’ when he was not ignored. ‘Mingling with his colleagues became distasteful’, says Browning, ‘and by November [1765], though still summoned to all cabinet meetings, Newcastle attended only if foreign affairs, his field of special interest and competence, were to be discussed.’ In January 1766 he offered to resign if his departure would clear the way for Pitt to join and strengthen the ministry – privately hoping he would not have to deliver on the promise – but Pitt refused to come in. In February and March 1766 he had one last triumph, playing a leading role in pushing the ministry’s repeal of the Stamp Act through the House of Lords and also helping persuade a doubtful George III that the policy of conciliation of the American colonies in the interests of trying to revive British trade was right. On the fall of the Rockingham government Newcastle left office for the last time on 30 July 1766, again refusing the offer of a pension (of £4,000 – worth over £350,000 a year today).18 ‘Seventy-three and ambition are ridiculous comrades’, wrote Horace Walpole but even now Newcastle would not retire from politics and public life, though



22 After Number 10

he knew he would not hold office again. He spoke frequently in the Lords, attacking the Chatham (Pitt) government. But his personal following largely fell away as his followers (looking to their own futures) shifted to support other leading figures and factions, back the government, or themselves retired, and his electoral influence faded (he could help return only seven MPs in the general election of 1768). Rockingham and other Whig leaders did not seek or follow his advice, and he seemed even more isolated, a figure from the past, looking at politics in an out-of-date way and failing to see new, emerging problems. He pressed the idea of an alliance with the Bedford faction on a reluctant and wary Rockingham (hosting key talks and negotiations and trying to play the part of a mediator) but it did not come off and in 1767 Bedford chose to swing behind the government.19 Newcastle’s marriage as well as his political career had started in 1717 and he was – unfashionably for the era – entirely faithful to his wife, Henrietta. It was a childless marriage but close and happy. The Duchess suffered from poor health and by the mid-1760s she was ‘a disabled old woman’, often off at Bath, taking the waters, attended by a posse of quacks and doctors. The Duke lavished considerable attention (and money and other forms of help) on his wider family and relatives, not all of whom reciprocated this affection – his heir and nephew, Lord Lincoln, became estranged and clearly felt that his uncle was managing to live far too long. Newcastle had inherited a fortune but squandered it by inept and reckless financial management, lavish entertainment, a profligate lifestyle, and heavy political (electioneering) spending. But in a corrupt age he was strikingly honest and graft-free and refused to enrich himself at the public’s expense. When he inherited them, his estates were bringing in £32,000 a year (perhaps £3.5 million today), but by the 1760s his income was down to about a quarter of that figure. He had to sell land to fund staggeringly large debts and when he died left debts of over £300,000 (£27 million pounds or more in today’s money).20 Age and ill health finally caught up with the Duke. He remained a political obsessive to the end but his last appearance at a political meeting was apparently in July 1767. In late 1767 he was seriously ill and seems to have suffered a stroke from which he did not fully recover, with his ability to walk and write limited and his memory impaired. He continued his incessant correspondence with friends and other politicians, firing off ‘letters of complaint and advice’ to his party leaders, who kept in touch and visited him – but not for serious political purposes. Newcastle’s biographer says that being irrevocably out of politics made Newcastle’s last year his unhappiest. He returned to his London house in the autumn of 1768, planning to be based there (close to the political action even if only as an observer) through the winter. But he collapsed with what was described as ‘a stroke of palsy’ and died shortly after, aged 75, on 17 November 1768.21




24 After Number 10

There are strong grounds for considering the Earl of Bute to be probably the most unpopular prime minister and then former prime minister in British history. Both during his brief ten-month premiership in 1762–63 and afterwards in his political retirement, he was subject to a torrent of vicious, spiteful and even obscene abuse, persecution and vilification from the press, cartoonists, the public and his political enemies. He was perhaps the most hated and reviled man in the country. He was denounced from the pulpit, threatened with assassination, hung and burned in effigy, and attacked by the mob. His town house in London was frequently the target for attack, and in 1768 (five years after he had resigned) rioters smashed the windows of his wife’s room as she lay in bed. In the same year, as Bute set sail from Dover to convalesce on the continent, he was threatened by a stonethrowing mob. He was sometimes compelled to travel in disguise or incognito. In the 1780s – 20 years after leaving office – the ex-prime minister was still receiving poison-pen letters and anonymous hate mail. It was not just intense public hostility that forced him into political exile but also that virtually all the other leading politicians came to regard him as politically beyond the pale and persona non grata, rejecting him as an ally and blocking any idea of his return to office and influence.22 Not that that he wanted a political come-back or to return to office. Bute was not suited for the stresses and strains of politics and the demands of ministerial life. Shy, aloof and withdrawn – though more competent than his enemies allowed – Bute was not in politics by nature, choice or ambition but only out of duty to his friend the King. Almost as soon as he became prime minister in May 1762 he began to talk about quitting office. He was too thin-skinned and too sensitive, unable to sleep, and his health was shattered – by the end of his premiership he seemed physically exhausted and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. After he left office, he spent a great deal of time between 1768 and 1771 abroad, in Italy and France, trying to keep out of politics and recover from illness. Even long into retirement, in 1778, a recurrence of press attacks – which he could never be persuaded not to read or to ignore – could make him upset and agitated, and trigger a serious bout of ill health.23 Bute had a long time in which to contemplate his political misfortunes for he was, as Peter Brown has pointed out, ‘the first prime minister to survive his resignation by a generation’. He was six weeks short of his fiftieth birthday when he resigned as prime minister, and he lived for almost another 29 years, dying at the age of 78 in 1792. ‘Every one of Bute’s predecessors, with the exception of the Duke of Devonshire, had either died in harness or been old men on retirement.’24 Devonshire had died in early middle age after only seven years of retirement. Bute lived long enough to see eight men succeed him in the premiership, with three of them pre-deceasing him.



Earl of Bute (resigned 8 April 1763)

Bute’s tremendous unpopularity was partly because of the way his Scottishness was used against him and partly because of cack-handed policies such as the strongly-opposed cider tax. What the political elite of the day and his rivals for office really disliked and distrusted about him was his status as a royal favourite, which posed a major threat to the ruling Whig oligarchy. His role as friend and mentor to the young George III lay behind his meteoric rise to power. Suspicions of his continuing royal access and ‘secret influence’ behind the scenes, as a power behind the throne, a meddler and an intriguer, carried over after he had resigned as prime minister.25 For a few years George III seems to have kept his confidence in Bute and to have trusted and liked his favourite more than he did his next two prime ministers, Grenville (1763–65) and Rockingham (1765–66). Relieved at being out of office, Bute wanted to retire completely from politics but probably hoped to keep in with the King and still have some general influence. Several of Bute’s friends and protégés were ministers in Grenville’s government, he had great influence and patronage in Scotland (through his brother, James Stuart Mackenzie, Lord Privy Seal in Scotland), and he initially remained Keeper of the Privy Purse, a key post in the Royal Household. The King continued to seek Bute’s advice, writing to his ‘Dear Friend’ asking for his views. Bute’s successors resented the real and imagined machinations of the ‘minister behind the curtain’, and felt Bute’s covert interference and influence were undermining them. They blamed and scapegoated him for their problems. But it did not help Bute that not long after recommending Grenville as his successor he was engaged in putting out feelers to Pitt to see if he would replace Grenville and form a new administration. Both Grenville and then Rockingham had to insist that the King give commitments not to consult Bute on public business, and Bute was pushed into the wilderness. He resigned his post as Privy Purse in September 1763, was at one point virtually banished from London for a while (more or less compelled to decamp to his country house in Bedfordshire), and in 1765 Mackenzie was dismissed by Grenville from his key Scottish post (though he was restored to it a year later). As King George III grew in experience and confidence, he looked less to his old tutor and adviser. In June 1766 Bute claimed not to have seen the King for a year and to be ‘ignorant to the last degree of what is going forward, the papers are my only intelligence’.26 In March 1766 he had spoken and voted against repeal of the Stamp Act – the first time he had differed from the King on a political issue. When Pitt formed a government in July 1766 (finding places for some of Bute’s former adherents but leaving Bute himself out in the cold), Bute took offence and thought he had been slighted. A letter of complaint he wrote to the King only made things worse. It was obvious the old days of his royal friendship and influential access were over. Any chance of a political role for Bute (except




as a whipping-boy for his enemies) was now terminated. He never saw the King again except in public and had no political communications with him. Years later, in 1778, tentative negotiations to lure him out of retirement and into an alliance with Chatham got nowhere: Bute was reluctant, Chatham died, and there was uproar when the exchanges were made public. Bute kept a seat in the House of Lords, as a Scottish representative peer until 1780 when he stood down on grounds of age (he was then 67). Three of his sons sat as MPs in parliament, the eldest of them being created a baron in 1776, the father and son therefore having the unusual distinction of both being in the Lords at the same time. Even more unusual, Bute’s wife was also a peeress in her own right (as Baronness Mountstuart of Wortley). One Bute biographer called her chapter on his retired life ‘The consolations of botany’, but there were also the consolations of money. Bute was not particularly wealthy in his own right but had married a rich heiress (and it seems to have been a happy marriage) who inherited estates and a personal fortune of over one million pounds (probably over £90 million today), generating an income of £17,000 a year (£1.5 million in today’s money). As one of the richest men in the country, with grand country houses (including one, Highcliffe, he built in the 1770s near Christchurch, Hampshire, on a site overlooking the sea, which became his favourite residence), he has been described as living a life of ‘melancholy grandeur’ in his long retirement.27 As he got older, he became more absorbed in his private pursuits and increasingly withdrew from society. He was a noted patron of science, literature and the arts and was an active and enlightened patron of Scottish universities and colleges. In 1786 he donated his private scientific library of 1,300 books to Marischal College, Aberdeen (where he was Chancellor), and later gave money and telescopes to develop its observatory. He had a magnificent library at his house Luton Hoo, unfortunately gutted by fire in 1771 and collected scientific instruments. His real, lifelong, passion was for botany. He had helped to create Kew Gardens (and remained its honorary director until 1772) and helped establish the Royal Botanical Garden at Edinburgh. He built up a great collection of plants and specimens and was a serious scholar of natural history. He produced and published (at a cost of £10,000) for limited private circulation, a ninevolume study, Botanical Tables Containing the Families of British Plants (1785), with 654 hand-coloured plates. Another book, A Tabular Distribution of British Plants, is often attributed to him. Botany may have helped kill Bute for in November 1790, while reaching for a plant he fell 28 feet down cliffs at Highcliffe and injured his ankle. It was slow to heal and there were complications. The fall is believed to have contributed to his death, in London, on 10 March 1792, at the age of 78, though it was reported he had died of a ‘disorder in his bladder’.28



26 After Number 10


Grenville had been prime minister for two years and 85 days when he was dismissed on 10 July 1765 by George III and replaced by the Marquess of Rockingham. He was 52 years old, an able and self-confident ‘man of business’, a capable parliamentarian, on top of the details of administration, finance and legislation (‘public business … was his luxury and amusement’, one contemporary noted, ‘an Act of Parliament was in itself entertaining to him’), and had been for a quarter of a century at that stage a professional politician whose life, says his modern biographer, ‘was devoted to politics, everything else came secondary’.29 He lived for a further five years after leaving the premiership and was active in opposition politics but never again held ministerial office. Grenville’s fall was sudden and he had nowhere to live when he left Number 10. After what has been described as ‘a slightly frantic search’ he bought a London town house in Bolton Street, Piccadilly (in the rush to leave he left behind in Downing Street his turtle which subsequently died). As a younger son Grenville had not been independently wealthy or propertied when he went into politics, but various legacies, official salaries, land purchases (including 35,000 acres in Florida) and shrewd stock market deals and investments meant he became, says John Beckett, ‘a wealthy man in his own right’. He was ‘active in both the land and money markets’ after 1765. According to Lawson, when he became prime minister in 1763 he had made ‘unprecedented demands’ of the King, first for a pension of £3,000 a year for himself when out of office (equivalent to nearly £300,000 a year today), and second for the reversion of a tellership of the exchequer for his ten-year old son – a sinecure bringing in a large fee income of several thousand pounds each year (the Grenvilles did not have to wait long, acquiring the post in 1764). The King agreed but commented on Grenville’s ‘avarice’. Grenville so carefully built up and managed his finances that he left £154,000 in trust for his children when he died (nearly £15 million in today’s money).30 Outside politics, when parliament was not sitting, Grenville usually escaped to enjoy family life in the country at Wooton House in Buckinghamshire. He had a close and happy marriage (his wife Elizabeth dying in December 1769), with seven surviving children ranging in age from 12 to 4 at the time he left office. His three sons all went into politics, the youngest, William, born in 1759, later himself becoming prime minister. Grenville’s premiership had been abruptly terminated largely because of his poor relations with and estrangement from King George III, and the King’s dislike and mistrust of his former prime minister was a big obstacle in the way of any return to power. Grenville’s suspicions about the behindthe-scenes influence of the King’s favourite, Lord Bute, had poisoned relations with his monarch who was alienated and wearied by what he experienced



George Grenville (dismissed from office 10 July 1765)

as the high-handed, even offensive, verbose, boring and tedious style of a PM he had not really wanted in the first place. The King had indeed been canvassing others and plotting to remove Grenville for some time before he finally forced him out. Such was the King’s personal detestation and hatred of Grenville that he is supposed to have declared he would rather see the devil in his closet than his former prime minister. The suggestion is ‘he would do all in his power to keep … Grenville from taking office again’. However, Lawson rejects the idea of a royal veto wrecking Grenville’s political prospects after 1765, arguing it is an assumption made by later historians and not one held by 18th century contemporaries. Beckett and Thomas argue that ‘royal antipathy’ meant a return to office was never likely. But Grenville himself did not admit to such a veto in his private papers. He continued to play the political game energetically, and at different times a return to office seemed possible, and contemporary politicians and political observers thought he might go back into government and perhaps even become prime minister again. Grafton in 1767 appears to have believed that the King would have put up with Grenville back ‘in a great office’ if he (Grafton) could thereby strengthen the ministry and remain in office. To Grenville himself, and to political rivals and allies, his exclusion from office and power did not at the time necessarily seem permanent. As Lawson puts it, Grenville in the late 1770s ‘did not attend Westminster for the sake of appearances or simply to relax in the role of elder statesman’. The ex-prime minister was ‘a politician still interested in occupying the highest offices of state’.31 The backing and loyal support of a personal following or a sort of personal party group was something Grenville had after, rather than before, he was prime minister. Perhaps someone who was respected rather than liked, Grenville had no seats at his disposal and little electoral influence to help his followers, but actively directed strategy and parliamentary tactics. It is estimated that over 70 MPs swung behind him when he left office and went into opposition. But his support steadily fell away or was chipped away following parliamentary setbacks, and as the prospects of a return to office faded (the selection of Chatham rather than Grenville to succeed Rockingham in 1766 was a major blow in that respect). His support had perhaps been halved even before 19 of his MPs were defeated in the 1768 general election, though nine new recruits were gained, giving him a following of 31 MPs in the new parliament. Being in opposition was something Grenville had little experience of, most of his career having been spent in government office. One MP at the time considered he did ‘not possess in any eminent degree opposition talents’. However, his biographer Philip Lawson argues that opposition ‘proved no hardship’ to him, saying he had a real standing at Westminster, an unrivalled knowledge of procedure, a stature in debate and could turn in effective performances in the House. ‘Grenville’s position remained strong



28 After Number 10

in the years 1765–70 for the simple reason that he was an effective leader in the Commons at a time when ministries were built around leading figures in the Lords.’32 He did make blunders, losing heavily when he fought unsuccessfully against the repeal of his ministry’s Stamp Tax (which had provoked violent protests in the American colonies), and suffering a damaging reverse when he tried to argue on legalistic constitutional grounds against an order forbidding the export of grain (in 1766), which most MPs accepted was a practical necessity to head off bread shortages and rioting. There were successes, such as the opposition victory on a vote to reduce the land tax in 1767. Opposition divisions and disunity – sometimes exploited by the government in a divide-and-rule manner – were a major problem. The Rockingham group was larger than Grenville’s (and there was a third, Bedford, group), and though they really needed to work together to make headway and regain office, co-operation was often difficult, both on policy and personal grounds. There was much mutual mistrust and resentment, Grenville did not rate Rockingham as prime-ministerial material and would not agree to serve under him. In turn Rockingham let it be known at one point that he would not be part of a ministry including Grenville. There were, however, signs of a closer working relationship between the two ex-prime ministers in 1769–70 over the Wilkes case (Grenville opposed the expulsion of Wilkes from the Commons as unconstitutional, and lost some of his own supporters as a result), which energised the forces of the opposition and contributed to the fall of the Grafton ministry. Grenville had a significant personal success in 1770, pushing through against government opposition but with the support of independent MPs a bill to reform the way the Commons handled disputed election cases (removing the process from the full House and establishing a select committee of MPs chosen by lot to hear cases). It was testimony to Grenville’s reputation, standing and prestige in the Commons. Still a fully committed, busy and active politician and leader, with everything to play for, Grenville then fell ill in the summer of 1770 and died (apparently of a blood disorder) at his house in London aged just 58 on 13 November. His ‘party’ soon broke up, some joining North’s government, others staying in opposition or drifting out of active politics. As an ex-prime minister Grenville had been a force to be reckoned with, and at the time of his death he showed no sign of quitting politics or fading away into quiet retirement. To the end he remained a first-rate and front-rank political figure.

William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham (resigned 14 October 1768) Few former prime ministers have had so dramatic an exit as the Earl of Chatham, collapsing in the House of Lords on 7 April 1778 in a ‘sudden fit’




as, ill and worn out, he made his last speech there – rather rambling, confusing and incoherent – denouncing the mismanagement of the war with America and the idea of acknowledging American independence. The scene was immortalised in a famous painting by the American artist, John Singleton Copley. Chatham lingered for a month at his house at Hayes Place, Bromley, in Kent, before dying, aged 69, on 11 May 1778. He received a public funeral, his body lying in state at Westminster (drawing huge crowds) before his burial in Westminster Abbey (he was the first of eight prime ministers to be buried there). Yet such was the controversy and strong opinions Chatham had aroused during his life and career, that the House of Lords voted against attending the funeral (though Rockingham and other opposition peers did go), and (showing the King’s aversion to him) there was Court pressure exerted to influence MPs and peers against going – the Speaker did not attend and only one member of the government and around 20 MPs were at the funeral.33 Chatham had left office nine and a half years earlier, his resignation as prime minister being accepted on 14 October 1768. But for 18 months previously he had been prime minister in name only as, incapacitated by illhealth and suffering a complete mental breakdown, he had withdrawn from politics. There was talk of ‘dejection of spirits almost approaching to insane melancholy’ and his wife was given power of attorney to act on his behalf. His government had been in serious trouble even before his collapse, with little sense of coherence, unity or direction, and a damaging mixture of egoism, autocratic leadership and poor political management from Chatham himself. The King had been reluctant to lose him and accepted his resignation only with the greatest reluctance. Grafton, who had been in effective charge of the government in Chatham’s absence, now became prime minister in name as well as in form. So embittered and disenchanted was the King by his sense of Chatham letting him down and deserting him, that he would never again contemplate offering him office.34 Although there were periods of intense political activity in Chatham’s post-premiership – particularly in 1770–71 and again in 1775 – when he displayed ‘his old brilliant style’ and energy, the years after 1768 have been described overall as ‘tragic’: ‘twilight years of frustration and failure, marked by growing political isolation, mental illness and physical decay’. When not ‘debilitated by illness’, says Marie Peters, he was marooned in ‘fruitless opposition’.35 Free from office Chatham had recovered enough to appear at Court and meet the King in July 1769 and resume political and parliamentary life later that year. But his life-long chronic health problems continued: what was usually described as ‘gout’ (covering a whole variety of ailments and problems in his limbs, stomach and bowels, and head), and serious – perhaps hereditary – mental-health problems (manic-depressive or bipolar disorder, according to modern diagnoses). He could sometimes put his physical



30 After Number 10

infirmities to political use, making dramatic Commons interventions while swathed in bandages and hobbling on crutches. But his mental problems would leave him a ‘shattered recluse’ for extended periods, as in 1767–68 and for two years in his retirement, 1775–77, when he came near to death. Although there were occasional rumours and suggestions that Chatham might return to office after 1768, it must be doubted he would ever have been physically and mentally robust enough for a prolonged and successful stint back in government.36 For a couple of years, 1772–74, Chatham withdrew from politics not because of illness but simply out of political frustration and disillusionment (North’s government being securely established, the various opposition groups going in different directions, and his small personal following atrophying). He spent most of his time in this period on family and private pursuits, busy ‘farming, hunting, and planting’, living mainly at the Burton Pynsent estate in Somerset he had inherited from a benefactor. There can be little doubt about his happy marriage to his wife Hester (made a peeress in her own right in 1761), whose devoted care helped him through his illnesses and who was also a political aide. In the early 1770s he seems to have enjoyed playing the ‘old doting daddy’ to his five children (then teenagers), all educated at home, his favourite, William (who became PM himself five years after his father’s death), being carefully coached as an orator and debater. Chatham presented himself in these years as ‘rich in rural peace, [with] ne’er thought of pomp or gold’, even writing a poem in which he described himself as with ‘Ambition cured, and an unpassion’d mind;/A statesman without power, and without gall,/Hating no courtiers, happier than them all;/Bow’d to no yoke, nor crouching for applause.’ The family finances were, however, usually in a hopeless state, Chatham having extravagant tastes, liking to spend freely on building works, gardens and farming, living constantly beyond his means and piling up debts. An income of perhaps £7,000 a year in the 1770s (including a pension of £3,000 a year that had been granted to him when he left office in 1761) was not large enough, and the family had frequently to be rescued and bailed out by loans from friends and relatives. At his death parliament voted £20,000 (roughly £1.7 million today) to clear his debts.37 It has been suggested that Chatham felt at home in and was suited to the opposition role he had to play after 1768, where he could try to parade and protect his reputation as the great patriot, a man of independence and integrity above faction, taking a sporadically active and critical role in parliament on big issues and an aggressive and uncooperative stance in negotiations. Marie Peters, however, insists that 1770–71 marked his ‘last great bid for power’ and that he seriously wanted office in that period. He felt betrayed by Grafton, and his attacks helped to weaken and bring down that ministry. But the King turned to Lord North, not to the opposition. He seized on and tried to exploit the controversies around Wilkes and the




Middlesex elections to make a populist appeal, with radical rhetoric, on the issues of the people, liberty, reform and the constitution. He was belligerent in the face of a possible war with Spain over the Falklands, perhaps hoping for a chance to play the part of the great war minister again. But he was an isolated figure with few followers (Shelburne being a notable admirer and supporter), and relations with the major opposition group, the Rockingham party, were not easy, with rifts and divisions on some key issues. His arrogance and sense of his own heroic superiority always made him a difficult man with whom to cooperate. By the beginning of 1772 he could see that the game was up and concluded that not ‘the smallest good’ could result from attendance in parliament.38 The developing crisis in America brought him back into the political fray, with Chatham calling in 1775 for the withdrawal of British troops from Boston and introducing a bill ‘for Settling the Troubles in America’, which was rejected in parliament. Chatham’s policy was to conciliate the American colonists by accepting their right not to be taxed without consent, but at the same time to reaffirm that the colonies were subordinate to the British crown and parliament. This attempt to bridge differences and head off conflict was by that stage unacceptable on both sides of the Atlantic, unrealistic and unworkable. In 1777 he returned to ‘thunder and lighten’ on the war, criticising the government and attacking the conduct of the war. It was not possible or desirable to subdue the Americans by force, he argued: ‘If you conquer them, what then?’ On the other hand he was adamantly against American independence (something on which the opposition was divided). As Britain’s position in America worsened, many wondered if Chatham might be recalled, though the notion that a sick old man might have been able to turn the situation around was a fantasy. In March 1778 a wobbling and unsteady North wanted the King to send for him to strengthen the ministry. However, the King’s hostility to ‘that perfidious man’ – saying that he ‘would rather lose the Crown’ than submit to him – and his refusal to accept Chatham’s demand to dominate in the manner of a ‘Dictator’ meant that negotiations broke down. A few months later, Chatham was dead. By then his years of greatness and of achievement lay long in the past, his peak being the second half of the 1750s. For much of the period after 1761 his role was more that of ‘a spoiler’, as Jeremy Black put it, and after his incapacitation in early 1767 and final retirement it was largely an unhappy story of decline and failure.39

Duke of Grafton (resigned 28 January 1770) Grafton was only 34 years old when he resigned as prime minister, making him the youngest ex-prime minister in British history, and he lived for another 41 years before dying, aged 75, in 1811 – the longest post-premiership to date. It had been a short premiership (one year and 106 days), starting in



32 After Number 10

October 1768, though for a year or so previously Chatham’s illness and incapacitation had made Grafton acting prime minister. He was not a successful prime minister or a strong leader. As his uneasy coalition splintered, the government ran into difficulties and he came under violent press attacks, it was possible to see his heart was not in it and he wanted to get out. Already in the summer of 1769, when he was on the losing side and overruled in a Cabinet battle over taxation of the American colonies, he had resolved (he later wrote in his autobiography) ‘to withdraw myself from my office, which was become very uncomfortable and irksome to me, on the first favourable opportunity that offered’.40 Strong opposition attacks in parliament and Cabinet divisions and resignations in January 1770 proved too much and Grafton threw in the towel, being succeeded by his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord North. ‘Though he spent most of his life in politics’, wrote Peter Durrant, ‘he was not a career politician’. That Grafton had been reluctant to become First Lord of the Treasury under Chatham in 1766 and came close to resigning the following year did not suggest a strong sense of political ambition or a craving for power. He did not fight to cling to office. As Durrant says, ‘He much preferred the life of a country gentleman, and he was invariably happier in the country than in London. There he could indulge in pursuits that really interested him: farming, hunting, racing … and … collecting and talking about books. His friends were drawn from men who shared these interests, rarely from the political world. And he greatly preferred to enjoy their company in the relaxed atmosphere of Euston Hall, his Suffolk home, than to immerse himself in the tensions and perplexities of public life.’41 Outside Westminster politics his public positions included Lord Lieutenant of Suffolk 1769–90, Chancellor of Cambridge University from 1768 until his death, and (from 1793) trustee of the British Museum. He was interested in agricultural questions and developed the family estates in Suffolk. He had what have been described as ‘deep religious feelings’ during the last 25–30 years of his life, associating with liberal churchmen and becoming a Unitarian. He published two theological works, Hints Submitted to the Serious Attention of the Clergy, Nobility and Gentry, by a Layman (1789) and The Serious Reflections of a Rational Christian from 1788 to 1797 (1797). In 1804 he started writing his autobiography, worked up from journals, letters and memoranda made at the time of the events recorded. The manuscript was kept in his family until edited and published in 1898.42 Grafton’s private life up to 1769 was rather scandalous: he was separated from his wife and lived openly with his mistress. But in that year his marriage was dissolved by Act of Parliament (he and Eden are the only two divorced premiers), he ended his relationship with his mistress, and remarried. With his second wife he enjoyed over 40 years of contented




married life and had 13 children – all born after he left the premiership (to add to the three children from his first marriage). At least five of his children appear to have predeceased him, and in his autobiography he admitted to having been hit hard by the deaths of two of his daughters in 1803 and 1804.43 Grafton remained politically active after 1770. He was a Whig but he supported North’s Tory administration, ‘speaking vigorously in its defence in debates in the Lords’. He was soon itching to be back in office and angled for the post of First Lord of the Admiralty when it became vacant early in 1771. But he had to wait until June 1771 when he became Lord Privy Seal, though he stipulated he did not want a seat in the Cabinet. He hoped he might be able to moderate policy towards the American colonies but found he could exert little influence, and in November 1775 resigned. A rather independent figure, who did not have a political group around him, he was nevertheless considered a figure worth catching, whose support could be valuable. Both North in 1779 and Pitt in 1783–84 offered him Cabinet posts, but he turned them down. He was in opposition against North from 1775 to 1782 and returned to office as Lord Privy Seal for a second time under Rockingham and Shelburne in 1782–83. It does not seem to have been a happy or constructive period in his career. Anson says Grafton ‘did not help to smooth the difficulties of the Ministry. He had come to adopt the attitude, so unsatisfactory in a colleague, of the critic who finds fault with everything, and yet suggests nothing at all, or nothing to the point.’ Fox called him ‘troublesome in the extreme’. Grafton himself reflected that ‘a Lord Privy Seal, who is not known and understood to be confidentially trusted and consulted by the principal minister, cuts but a silly figure at a Cabinet’. ‘I was vain enough to think’, he commented about his relations with Shelburne, ‘that my experience in the place he holds would have enabled me to have given often useful opinions.’ But as the differences between them widened and Grafton found he was not consulted, he saw the King in February 1783 to inform him he was going to resign his office. The government afterwards soon broke up. After 1783 he never again held government office and, while maintaining his interest in politics, his stance gradually became that of ‘a bystander’, as Anson put it, and his contributions to debate became rare. He broadly supported Pitt until, disagreeing with his foreign policy, he moved over to opposition in the 1790s, becoming an opponent of the government’s repressive measures at home, and advocating peace with France.44 Grafton died in relative obscurity. His local Suffolk newspaper, The Ipswich Journal, in its note of his passing, listed various public offices he had held and described him as ‘a steady friend to religious toleration’, but omitted to mention that he had briefly been 40 years previously prime minister of Britain.45



34 After Number 10


‘No man ever showed more calmness, cheerfulness and serenity’, recalled an MP who dined with Lord North, in what has been described as ‘a happy family atmosphere’, on the day he resigned the premiership in 1782. North left office with dignity and in good spirits, and with relief rather than with regret. He had been prime minister for 12 years but had been begging the King many times over the previous years to let him resign, and had been refused. A capable administrator, a skilled parliamentarian, adept in the use of charm and humour, and with excellent relations with King George III, North was a good peacetime prime minister. But he was not up to the demands of wartime leadership, and as Britain went down to defeat in the American War of Independence, so North’s position became more embattled, and his nerve and will to carry on more fragile. As his parliamentary support weakened, he narrowly scraped through successive no-confidence motions in March 1782, but he could see the ‘torrent [was] too strong to be resisted’ and finally persuaded a reluctant King – who accused him of desertion – to accept the inevitable and let him resign before he was defeated in the Commons.46 It did not, however, seem like the final curtain for North. He was still an influential and able figure, backed by a group of over 100 MPs in the House of Commons, and just turning 50 years old. To contemporaries a return to office and even another North premiership must have seemed likely at some point. Neither of his two immediate successors – Rockingham, who died, and then the unpopular Shelburne – lasted long in Number 10. The combination of the emergence and dominance of the young William Pitt, the damage to North’s reputation caused by his apparently opportunistic alliance with Charles James Fox, and the collapse of North’s health within a few years finished his career. There was some talk of impeaching North, and Shelburne proposed at the new Cabinet he be brought to a ‘Publick Trial’. Impeachment proceedings later brought against Warren Hastings (1787) and Lord Melville (1806) suggested this process was not an obsolete or archaic threat. One MP who was a bitter enemy moved for his impeachment in the Commons, but the motion was not seriously debated. A contemporary writer claimed North feared the loss of his head and was driven into alliance with Fox to escape the risk of a state trial, but this view is fanciful. North’s correspondence does not indicate he seriously thought impeachment was likely. Many of North’s opponents liked him personally and he was still popular with the public, which would not have stood for it. Talk of impeachment, suggests Alan Valentine, was for political ends – a way to throw mud and put the ex-prime minister and his supporters on the defensive.47 The release from the chains of office seems to have done North a lot of good. He was said to be ‘very good company’ and his friend Edward



Lord North (resigned 20 March 1782)

Gibbon, the historian, noted in September 1782 he was ‘not so fat and more cheerful than ever’. When the ex-prime minister reached Manchester on tour of the north of England, the crowds were so pleased to see him that they unfastened the horses and pulled his carriage through the streets themselves. George III seemed to overcome his annoyance at North’s resignation, arranging a pension of £4,000 a year (approximately £300,000 today), and may have offered him a peerage (North’s title was a courtesy one, as son of an Earl). However, they soon fell out again over repayment of the £30,000 North had borrowed from bankers to help pay for the 1780 general election. After North left office, the King would initially accept responsibility for only £13,000 of the debt, insisting the rest was North’s. But there was no way he could (or felt he should) meet that liability and only in 1784 did the King grudgingly pick up the tab. The dispute soured their once-close relationship.48 A little over a year after resigning as prime minister, North in April 1783 was back in government in controversial circumstances, as Home Secretary in alliance with Fox under the nominal leadership of the Duke of Portland. The partnership between the two former political foes was denounced as ‘a cynical sacrifice of principles to sheer political expediency’, motivated by greed for office. However, the parliamentary arithmetic after Fox had broken with Shelburne pointed to the need for some sort of coalition or combination, and the new partners came together in opposition to the American peace-terms negotiated by Shelburne. North said his primary aim was to see a stable administration in office, claimed to ‘hate the thought of resuming the Seals’ and ‘wish[ed] never more to be in the Cabinet’, insisting he ‘renounce[d] all hopes of regaining my former political situation’. At some level, however, the lure of office and power remained strong. North’s family opposed the alliance with Fox, and North himself was later said to have wished he had taken their advice and he regretted it. George III had tried in vain to persuade North to break with Fox, and was determined to be rid of the government forced on him at the first opportunity – he abruptly dismissed it eight months later in December 1783.49 North was Home Secretary in the coalition government with his eldest son George (an MP since 1778) as his junior minister. A plan for North to go to the House of Lords was thwarted when the resentful King refused to create new peers on the government’s recommendation. North has been rightly described as a ‘sleeping partner’, playing ‘second fiddle’ and taking a ‘back seat’ in the government, in which Fox was the dominant figure and driving force, although he took the lead in rejecting a call for parliamentary reform, on which subject the government had a decisive Commons victory.50 The Fox-North coalition badly damaged North’s reputation. The enmity of William Pitt – who regarded him as the man responsible for the American war and for allowing the King an unconstitutional influence, and who saw



36 After Number 10

him as a dangerous rival to his own ambitions, the only alternative PM in the Commons – was a further barrier to a return to power. Pitt’s refusal to serve in the same Cabinet with North had blocked any chance of a ShelburneNorth combination in 1783. Pittite attacks on North were intense over the next few years, Pitt conducting what Thomas describes as a ‘vendetta’ against the former prime minister. After Pitt’s triumph in the 1784 election – in which North’s personal following was reduced from 112 MPs to 69 – North’s political position quickly weakened. For a year or so he remained active in debate and in opposition to the government. But from the mid-1780s rapidlydeteriorating health, and a realisation there was no political future for him, led him to withdraw more into private and family life. He tended to appear in the Commons only for subjects that particularly interested him (such as speaking out against parliamentary reform and in defence of the established church). His supporters drifted away and by 1788 his personal parliamentary group was estimated as down to 20 MPs or even fewer.51 By the late 1780s North was ‘sick, blind and old beyond his years’. His eyesight had never been good and by 1787 he was virtually blind. His general health deteriorated also. Sometimes he became depressed but on the whole bore his afflictions and enforced political retirement with fortitude and good humour, helped and supported by his close and affectionate family. North’s genuine happiness in family life, and his abstention from the sort of drinking, gambling, womanising and financial avarice that marked so many of the 18th century political and aristocratic elite, were notable.52 His last speech in the Commons was in 1789 and he made a few speeches in the House of Lords (critical of Pitt’s foreign policy) after he succeeded his father and became the second Earl of Guilford in 1790. He had not lost his old debating force and eloquence. North had chronic money worries for most of his life, often being dogged by debt, and in 1777 the King had given him £16,000 (something like £1.3 million today) to pay off debts. In 1771 the King had appointed Lady North Ranger of Bushy Park; this sinecure gave the family use of a country home near to London, and in 1778 he made North Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. The salary attached to this position was a welcome addition to North’s finances. North’s father was always mean and tight-fisted towards him, and only when he died – at the age of 86 – did North finally come into secure wealth and estates worth over £10,000 a year (about £800,000 a year in today’s money). He did not have long to enjoy them. In 1792 symptoms of dropsy appeared (modern medicine would probably link this to congestive heart failure or kidney disease), and he died, aged 60, on 5 August 1792.

Marquess of Rockingham (died in office 1 July 1782) Rockingham was prime minister twice (1765–66 and 1782) but for a total of barely 16 months and his performance and achievements in that role




cannot be highly rated. In his first stint in office he was young (35), inexperienced, and poor in debate. Second time around, he was ill when he took office, frequently absent from the Lords and rarely spoke there. A little over three months (96 days) after he became prime minister for the second time, he died suddenly and unexpectedly at his home in Wimbledon. His real importance as a political figure comes from the nearly two decades he spent – largely in opposition – leading the largest single group of Whigs, though the Rockingham ‘party’ split after his death, which was followed by the short-lived governments of Shelburne and then the Fox-North coalition (under Portland) before the 20-years Tory dominance of Pitt the Younger. An immensely rich and landed grandee (with an annual income rising to about £40,000 – equivalent to over £4 million today), Rockingham often seemed ill at ease in national politics, and more at home in his Yorkshire power base, managing his estates, indulging his passion for horse-racing and gambling, and collecting art (he was an important patron of George Stubbs, one of the greatest painters of horses). He suffered from ill health for most of his life, with long-term problems with his urinogenitary system (perhaps damaging his kidneys), for which the medics and quacks of the day could do little, though contemporaries attributed his death to influenza (probably pneumonia on a modern reading of the evidence). He was only 52 when he died (just three other PMs dying younger) and is buried in York Minster, the only prime minister to be buried in Yorkshire.53

Earl of Shelburne (resigned 26 March 1783) Shelburne was described by a 20th century successor in the premiership as a ‘superb failure’.54 It is a good description of someone who, for all his intellectual talents and far-sighted views, spent only three and a half years in ministerial office in his long political career, including fewer than nine months as prime minister (1782–83). Shelburne resigned after the House of Commons rejected the unpopular peace terms he had negotiated with the United States, his government had started to break up (with ministerial resignations), and he had begun to lose the King’s confidence and support. He was only 45 years old when he left office, and though he lived another 22 years and was often active in the House of Lords, Shelburne’s political career was effectively over and he never held office again. In a parliamentary and Cabinet system politics demands the ability to work with other people in a team, which Shelburne was unable to do. ‘He was touchy and interfering as a subordinate, uncooperative as an equal and secretive when in command’, sums up Charles Stuart. Mistrust, suspicion and resentment flowed both ways, and there was much friction and many disputes within his ministry. Few of Shelburne’s colleagues were sorry to see him forced out or were willing to work with him again. Being unpopular and detested by other politicians, and unable to win and keep



38 After Number 10

their confidence, were key factors keeping him in the wilderness after 1783. King George III actively disliked him and his radical ideas too, and formed a major obstacle to any comeback. Faults of character, manner and behaviour had given Shelburne a reputation in the political world for intrigue, inconsistency, arrogance, insincerity, deceit, treachery and even corruption. He was a man few were sorry to see frozen out.55 But it was not just personal unpopularity that brought about Shelburne’s fall and isolation. He had only a small group of followers himself and lacked the support and backing of a party within parliament, and particularly in the House of Commons, unlike his rivals. Such were the suspicions entertained of Shelburne that when after his fall from power he took himself off to Spa to take the waters, the new Fox-North government had the former prime minister’s mail opened under the suspicion he was somehow, in opposition to Fox’s policy, conspiring to promote an Anglo-French alliance.56 Shelburne had made the 23 years old William Pitt Chancellor of the Exchequer, and after the dismissal of Portland and the Fox-North coalition in December 1783, and when Pitt became prime minister, the door was implacably clanged shut on any lingering possibility of a return to office. Shelburne later complained of a ‘breach of faith’ by Pitt and Lord Thurlow (who had been his Lord Chancellor, a key figure in the plots and manoeuvres that had brought down the Fox-North government, and was then rewarded with the Lord Chancellorship under Pitt). John Norris argued that Pitt’s new ministry might have been strengthened if Shelburne had been appointed a secretary of state and put in charge of foreign affairs or India. By the beginning of 1784, he suggests, Shelburne had perhaps even reconciled himself to serving under Pitt. But Pitt – showing, as Hague puts it, ‘the cool ruthlessness which characterises those politicians who are capable of seizing power and keeping it’ – had no intention of consulting or including his former patron and leader. He had not enjoyed working with him, knew his reputation and unpopularity made him a liability, and was determined to show he was in the driving seat. Lord Sydney, Pitt’s Home Secretary, explained to one of Shelburne’s supporters that the former prime minister would be impossible as a Cabinet colleague: it would almost be as bad as bringing back the hated figure of Lord Bute.57 In October 1784 Pitt wrote to him with an offer of a step up in the peerage and a marquessate, saying ambiguously he wanted his government to ‘receive the most public marks of your Lordship’s approbation’. The office of Lord Privy Seal was vacant and there were rumours Shelburne might be offered it. Shelburne wrote to one of his supporters, Issac Barré, that he was inclined to support Pitt, would not enter into any ‘cabal’ against him or with any part of the Opposition, and – as for the premiership – said ‘I detest the situation for myself.’ But, he explained, he would not take office unless the King specifically desired it and unless he could




first negotiate with Pitt about policy. As Norris suggests, it seems probable that Shelburne hoped at least to be brought in from the cold and consulted in the role of an elder statesman – ‘in some confidential line without office’. But Pitt was determined to exclude him and Shelburne became the Marquess of Lansdowne with the reality of power as far away as ever. A year later in 1785 he was reported to be ‘not in the most satisfactory temper with the ministers’, saying in 1786 he found the ministry’s attitude towards him ‘unaccountable’. He had by then virtually no personal followers left, and admitted in that year that he was ‘growing very insignificant, very fast in the political world’.58 Lansdowne had plenty of non-political satisfactions. Immense wealth came from the large family estates in Ireland and England, giving an estimated income of about £50,000 a year (equivalent to at least £2 million today). At Lansdowne House in Berkeley Square, London, and Bowood, his large country house in Wiltshire, Lansdowne had long patronised and surrounded himself with some of the most prominent intellectuals, scientists and dissenters of the day (including Joseph Priestley, Jeremy Bentham and Richard Price, and many visiting thinkers from the Continent). After his fall he often preferred to avoid parliament and London, and to preside over his intellectual salon at Bowood. Many reformist ideas about administrative and electoral reform, Ireland, and foreign policy were aired and developed in his circle, and Shelburne/Lansdowne was open to new thinking. But against the background of the French Revolution his ‘advanced’ and ‘radical’ ideas often seemed dangerous. Edmund Burke attacked Lansdowne’s circle at Bowood in Reflections on the Revolution in France as a set of ‘literary caballers, and intriguing philosophers … political theologians and theological politicians’.59 In his family and private circle Shelburne comes across as pleasant, amiable, unselfish and charming – the exact opposite of his political personality and reputation. His first wife had died in 1771 and he had married again in 1779, but his second wife died in 1789. Norris writes that ‘Shelburne felt her death … perhaps more than he had done that of his first wife. It left him alone in the world in his later middle age, when he was in the political wilderness without the distraction of public affairs.’60 Lansdowne continued to speak in the House of Lords, but John Cannon describes him as speaking more ‘as a commentator, or even a lecturer, rather than a leading politician’. He became increasingly ‘distanced from the main body of political opinion. By the 1790s his sense of grievance and resentment toward Pitt was strong, and he was in active and persistent opposition. In 1791 he was praising the French National Assembly for declaring that the right of making peace and war belonged to the nation, not to the Crown. In 1793 he protested against war with France. He kept pressing for parliamentary reform. Pitt was necessarily pragmatic and cautious, and kept his distance from the man who first brought him to office.’



40 After Number 10

Newspapers vilified him as a friend of the Jacobins as he argued for peace with France and protested against the suspension of habeas corpus and the moves against domestic radicals, and he admitted himself that ‘the tide of popularity was against him’.61 In 1801 a recurrence of the illness of King George III raised the possibility of a Regency, putting the Prince of Wales into power and opening the way for a new ministry. Lansdowne agreed to serve alongside Fox as a secretary of state under Lord Moira. But within a month the King recovered his health and sanity, and the chance of a comeback slipped away. Lansdowne lived to see his youngest son (Lord Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, later the Third Marquess) take the first steps in a distinguished political career, becoming an MP in 1802; he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, aged 26, in 1806 and had a long Cabinet career in Whig politics, serving under seven different PMs in all and refusing the premiership himself. Later still, the Fifth Marquess served as Viceroy of India and as Foreign Secretary under Salisbury and Balfour, 1900–05. In May 1803 Shelburne made his last speech in the Lords, arguing against a resumption of the war with France. Then illness compelled him to give up parliament and he died at his house in London, aged 68, on 7 May 1805.




3

Henry Addington (resigned 10 May 1804) Addington’s post-premiership is in some ways one for the record books. Aged only 47 when he resigned as prime minister in 1804, he lived for nearly another 40 years (only Grafton lived longer after being PM). During that time he held ministerial office for a total of 14 years and served in the Cabinets of four of his successors in Number 10 (on both counts no one else has equalled this achievement). However, his stance as an arch reactionary during this period did his reputation little good at the time and for long afterwards. He was attacked in verse by Shelley as like a viper or a vulture, as ‘hypocrisy on a crocodile’, while government spies sent back reports on the radical poet to him as a Home Secretary who almost revelled in his unpopularity as a sign he was doing his job properly.1 All of Addington’s experience as a government minister came after, not before, he became prime minister. Uniquely he had been Speaker of the House of Commons for 12 years before serving just three years as prime minister (1801–04). As a supporter, friend and protégé of William Pitt Addington obtained his political chances, and Pitt in effect both made and unmade him as a prime minister. Indeed Pitt, much of the political world and Addington himself seem to have regarded him as a sort of caretaker, a stand-in prime minister, occupying the post on sufferance, until the Great Man was ready and able to resume office again.2 At one point in 1803 Addington proposed he quit, offering variously to serve alongside Pitt under an alternative compromise prime minister or to serve under Pitt himself, taking a peerage and becoming a Secretary of State. Pitt responded with an ungenerous plan to shove Addington into an ‘honorific grave’ in a newly-created post as Speaker of the House of Lords.3 A year later Pitt’s open hostility caused Addington’s majority in the Commons to crumble away and he resigned office on 10 May 1804. The embattled prime minister felt resentment but also ‘overwhelming relief’ at his departure from office. Ziegler describes him as ‘close to being a 42



Addington to Melbourne

broken man’ by the end, drinking perhaps 20 glasses of wine at dinner before he could face the Commons bear-pit, and someone reduced to ‘a haggard neurotic, sleeping badly, short-tempered, scenting insults and hostility even where there were none, doubting his own capacities and pathetically uncertain even of his closest friends’. His government had negotiated a peace with France but that had soon broken down and war had been resumed. Addington was not up to being prime minister in these circumstances and was determined not to hold the post again.4 The first middle-class prime minister (a doctor’s son), Addington did not have large estates or wealth to fall back on, but he was comfortably off. With £2,000 a year of his own money, his wife’s income of £1,000 a year and £3,000 a year from the sinecure position (the Clerkship of the Pells) to which he had appointed his eldest son in 1802, he felt able to turn down the King’s offer to settle a pension of £4,000 a year on the ex-prime minister’s wife. One of Addington’s key political assets was – and remained in the years ahead – George III’s esteem, friendship and trust. The King had granted him in 1801 use of a royal residence, the White Lodge in Richmond Park, and allowed him to live in it for life after he left Number 10. Addington had turned down the Order of the Garter in 1803 and on leaving the premiership refused the King’s offer of an Earldom. Although unglamorous, colourless, pedestrian and a poor debater, Addington was still the leader of a sizeable group in parliament, backed by some 68 MPs – a group which could hold the balance. He had resolved to ‘keep clear of all parties’, neither to be ‘extinguished’ by Pitt nor to be the ‘stalkinghorse or cat’s paw of Opposition’.5 He was in an uncomfortable position, prepared to vote against Pitt’s government on specific measures but not wanting to oppose it outright while equally reluctant fully to support it. Fox, Grenville and the Opposition made overtures. But the King’s strong desire to see him back in office and Pitt’s pressing need for support in the Commons pointed towards the political reconciliation that Addington at heart wanted. It occurred in January 1805, when he was persuaded to come off the fence, swing his group behind the government and (together with some of his supporters) take office. He would have preferred to stay in the Commons but reluctantly accepted the peerage insisted upon by Pitt and the King, becoming Viscount Sidmouth and being appointed Lord President of the Council. The reunion lasted only six months before Sidmouth resigned. He had played only a ‘trivial role’ in the Cabinet.6 Neither Pitt nor Sidmouth – and more so their friends and acolytes – fully trusted their new allies (Canning was a particularly contemptuous and vicious enemy of Sidmouth). There were squabbles over ministerial appointments and a major falling-out over the parliamentary inquiry and censure of Lord Melville for his mismanagement of Admiralty finances (Sidmouth favoured criminal proceedings against Pitt’s old friend). Feeling his views were being ignored, Sidmouth



Addington to Melbourne 43

left the government on 5 July 1805. Six months later, in January 1806, Pitt died. While Sidmouth never forgave him for the way he had treated him as prime minister and for what he saw as his ‘injustice’ and ‘arrogance’ in the coalition in 1805, there is a sense in which he had been secure in the role of second fiddle to Pitt and had now lost his political master and compass.7 There was some speculation that Sidmouth might become prime minister at the head of a patched-up coalition but the breach with the Pittites was too deep. Instead he ended up serving for 13 months in Grenville’s ‘Ministry of All the Talents’ 1806–07, first as Lord Privy Seal then as Lord President of the Council. It was another unhappy episode. Sidmouth and the Whigs had little sympathy or respect for each other and were divided on key issues like abolition of the slave trade (where he infuriated abolitionists with his ‘gradualist’ caution and immobilism). Sidmouth had few illusions that Grenville wanted anything other than his influence with the King and his bloc of parliamentary votes. After that group lost around a third of its strength in the 1806 general election, Sidmouth felt his position and already limited influence were further weakened. From the start Sidmouth had warned Grenville he would not support Catholic emancipation, which was the issue that brought down the government in March 1807 amid complex manoeuvres over legislation to allow Catholics to hold military commissions. There were misunderstandings and charges of bad faith and treachery along with Whig allegations that Sidmouth had betrayed them with the King and the Opposition, and Sidmouth feared that Grenville was plotting to bring in his sworn enemy Canning. Sidmouth resigned and the King then effectively dismissed the government. Sidmouth spent the next five years (1807–12) out of office and in the political wilderness, still with his own small personal following in the Commons, but stuck in a political no man’s land, out of sympathy with and trying to be independent of both the government and the opposition, and with bitter enemies determined to exclude him from power. He would not serve alongside Canning and there was no place for him in the Portland government (1807) or in Perceval’s (1809). This period was difficult in Sidmouth’s private and family life. He had been seriously ill in 1805 (with what his doctors called ‘congestion of the liver’) and his health broke down again in 1807 (suffering from erysipelas) and he was out of action for several months. His eldest son’s complete physical and mental breakdown in 1805, from which he never recovered (he died, an invalid, in 1823), was a devastating blow and a continuing strain. In 1811 Sidmouth’s wife, Ursula, who had had long periods of illhealth herself but who had steadfastly supported a man not naturally lighthearted, died aged just 51. The tragedy left him so stunned and afflicted that for a while he wanted to retire from public life. But in 1812 Sidmouth was back in harness, first recruited by Perceval in April of that year as Lord President of the Council, to strengthen his gov-



44 After Number 10

ernment and then, after the prime minister’s assassination and Liverpool’s assumption of power in June, as Home Secretary. (There were rumours that Sidmouth might be asked to become PM again but he was sure he would not be and clear that, if he were, he would refuse.) Sidmouth was to be the longest-serving Home Secretary in British history, holding that office for nine and a half years until January 1822. It was the sort of senior departmental position he had wanted and was best suited for, saying in 1808 he ‘would not be a Noun adjective to any Government’ and looked for ‘a situation of perfect and unqualified responsibility’.8 His parliamentary group was now (re)absorbed into the Tories and Sidmouth ceased to function as a separate parliamentary leader. He was largely left a free hand, and although he had friendly enough relations with Liverpool he was never an intimate of the prime minister or part of the government’s inner group. Sidmouth’s strengths were as a steady, calm, patient and industrious administrator, on top of the heavy workload and not afraid to take decisions. He could be personally kindly, humane and fair. His limitations were a narrow and inflexible conservatism, a profound hostility to reform and a lack of imagination. Faced by the great social hardships and unrest, popular agitation and disturbances which followed the war and the pressures of economic and industrial change, Sidmouth’s reaction was alarmist and repressive. Strongly committed to laissez faire and to the existing order, he believed government could do little or nothing to alleviate social problems and, with his fears fed by lurid reports from government spies and informants, he found it easy to believe in the dangers of revolution and subversive plots and conspiracies. There were real conspirators, and in 1820 Sidmouth personally supervised the operation which foiled the ‘Cato Street Conspiracy’, a plot to blow up the Cabinet. But as the Home Secretary who hanged Luddites, suspended Habeas Corpus, introduced panic legislation to restrict public meetings and shackle the popular press, and defended the ‘Peterloo massacre’ killing by troops of 11 people at a large demonstration in Manchester (even though the local magistrates had disobeyed his private instructions not to disperse the mob unless there were a riot), he acquired a reputation as blinkered, harsh, authoritarian and reactionary. In January 1822 Sidmouth left the Home Office but remained in the Cabinet as a minister without portfolio. Now in his mid-60s he was in reasonably good health but starting to feel the strain and thinking about retirement. He had struck up a good relationship with the new King, George IV, who urged him to stay in the government and who twice (in 1820 and 1821) when Liverpool was threatening resignation, pressed him to become prime minister (Sidmouth would not hear of it and told the King to stick with Liverpool). In 1822 the King granted him a pension of £3,000 a year, something welcome after the loss of his Home Secretary’s salary, but the prime minister, Liverpool, was unhappy about it and there




was some criticism in parliament. Liverpool felt Sidmouth had had a long enough innings and would have been happy to see him go altogether. But he hung on before finally resigning in November 1824, a fading presence, marginalised and ignored, politically obsolete, and resenting the growing influence of Canning in the government. Sidmouth (who was 67 when he finally retired from the government) lived for another 20 years. He attended the House of Lords only infrequently making his last speech there in 1829 in opposition to the Catholic Emancipation Bill. A couple of years later, he was one of the die-hard Tory opponents of the Reform Act (‘I hope God will forgive you on account of this bill’, he said to Grey, ‘I don’t think I can.’)9 After this intervention his public life more or less came to an end; only on a few minor occasions was he seen to attend or vote in the Lords. In 1823 Sidmouth had caused a stir by marrying, at the age of 66, a woman nearly 30 years younger (about the age of his eldest daughter). The new Lady Sidmouth was wealthy and Sidmouth now surrendered the pension the King had granted him. In retirement after 1824 he took trips around Europe for the first time in his life (he had never undertaken the Grand Tour of the young aristocrats and then the wars with France and the demands of political life had kept him at home). Mostly he spent his time at White Lodge at Richmond or playing the lord of the manor at his house in Devon. Sidmouth lived to be nearly 87: declining tranquilly, placidly content in his private life, outliving his friends, still interested in the political scene but a forgotten figure. ‘I am gradually wearing out’, as he put it in 1839 and he became increasingly frail, deaf, his eyesight going, hardly able to walk.10 Lady Sidmouth, who had suffered much ill-health, died in 1842 and the aged and feeble Sidmouth was looked after by his eldest daughter. Two years later, he died, probably from pneumonia, on 15 February 1844. He was far from being a great prime minister or even a great ex-prime minister, and his limitations were obvious, but he was the sort of useful, responsible, conscientious, competent and personally honourable second division politician needed at all times to keep the system going.

William Pitt the Younger (died in office 23 January 1806) Pitt did not have a ‘post-premiership’, dying in office at the age of only 46 on 23 January 1806 at Bowling Green House, Putney Heath, London. He had an extraordinary career: Chancellor of the Exchequer after being an MP for only 18 months and prime minister the following year in December 1783 at the age of 24. In total he served 18 years and 11 months as prime minister (1783–1801 and 1804–06), the second-longest tenure after Walpole, and longer than any subsequent PM. The youngest person ever to have been appointed to the job, of the 38 prime ministers who to date have suc-



46 After Number 10

ceeded him in that office, only two – Lord Liverpool and Tony Blair – have held it at an age younger than that of Pitt at the time he died – and they were both aged in their forties rather than their twenties when they became prime minister.11 There is no sign, as William Hague says, that Pitt ‘ever really envisaged developing a life away from public affairs’.12 The idea he might have gone back to practise as a lawyer after leaving office in 1801 seems farfetched. Politics had become Pitt’s whole life as a young man and he was not going to walk away. During the three years he spent out of office between 1801 and 1804 he was, at first, regularly consulted by his successor Henry Addington and lent the new government active support and assistance for a year or so. Later, Pitt rebuffed attempts to lure him back into government, serving under Addington or another compromise figure. Pitt was adamant he would return to office only as prime minister. Pitt ‘had passed his first decade in office pretty well’, according to John Ehrman, and he was in reasonably good health (though starting to suffer from gout) until the early 1790s. Aggravated by the strains of office and the war with France, and by heavy alcohol consumption, his health then started sharply to decline. He had poor health and several serious illnesses during the last four or five years of his first premiership and thereafter. He was an alcoholic but was also a workaholic, wearing himself out and destroying his health through his prolonged exertions in government. Never marrying and not being widely sociable, he bore the load alone. In the end his doctor said, Pitt ‘died of old age at forty-six as much as if he had been ninety’. Various causes of death have been suggested: renal failure, bowel cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, gastrointestinal lesion, gastric or duodenal ulceration. Pitt was beyond the help of the medicine of the day and the combination of serious disease on top of exhaustion, stress and drink was lethal.13 Unusually for his era Pitt was not apparently interested in what he could get out of politics in terms of honours and money. In 1790 he refused the Order of the Garter, asking the King to give it to his elder brother instead. Two years later he reluctantly accepted the sinecure of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, which brought with it £3,000 a year and an official residence at Walmer Castle in Kent. Pitt’s personal finances were a black hole of carelessness, mismanagement and debt. He turned down offers of large sums from the City and from the King to pay off his debtors though his friends organised a private fund in 1801 which raised nearly £12,000. On his death in 1806 Parliament voted £40,000 (equivalent to over £2 million today) to pay off his debts, his affairs being in such a mess that it took his executors 15 years to sort them out before probate was granted. After a lying-in-state in the Palace of Westminster, Pitt had a public funeral and was buried in Westminster Abbey.




48 After Number 10

Grenville’s premiership at the head of the so-called ‘Ministry of All the Talents’ in 1806–07 was short (only 13 months) and saw just one lasting achievement: the abolition of the slave trade. He had become prime minister following Pitt’s death reluctantly and left office with feelings of great relief. It has been argued his ten-year Foreign Secretaryship under Pitt in the 1790s, and his impact on the 19th century party system through his leadership of the Grenvillite party after 1801 and that of the Whig coalition 1804–17, were more important than his ‘ephemeral premiership’.14 There seems to have been some ‘ambivalence about politics and the pursuit of power’ on Grenville’s part, as McCahill puts it. He wanted high (but preferably undemanding) office, status and financial security but did not have the all-consuming drive and ambition of the successful top leaders. In 1801, when Pitt resigned and Grenville left office as Foreign Secretary (then aged just 41), he had contemplated retirement from politics. He had then been in government office for 17 years. He had obtained his peerage in 1790. He had married a rich young heiress, his cousin Anne Pitt. He was financially secure, having on top of his private wealth picked up a sinecure office (the Auditorship of the Exchequer) worth around £4,000 a year. He even sold his London home and intended to live full time at his beloved country house, Dropmore Park in Buckinghamshire. Although he remained a formidable speaker, able to dominate the Lords, the pull of private life was strong for Grenville and his political appetite and commitment (certainly in the second half of his career, after 1800) were somewhat doubtful.15 Finding the premiership burdensome and dispiriting, Grenville wanted to retire and seems almost to have courted the government’s dismissal in March 1807 by refusing to give King George III the pledges he wanted on the Catholic issue. He had few regrets at leaving Number 10. He had been longing ‘daily and hourly’, he said, ‘for the moment when my friends will allow me to think that I have fully discharged (by a life of hitherto incessant labour) every claim that they, or the country can have on me.’ He felt he lacked ‘one great and essential quality’ for the premiership: ‘I am not competent to the management of men. I never was so naturally, and toil and anxiety more and more unfit me for it.’ Asked to attend a meeting to discuss opposition tactics against the incoming Portland administration, he replied he felt ‘very repugnant to any course of very active opposition, having been most unaffectedly disinclined to take upon myself the task in which I have been engaged and, feeling no small pleasure in an honourable release, I could not bring myself to struggle much to get my chains on again’.16 Nevertheless for the next ten years Grenville acted as leader of the main body of opposition to the Portland, Perceval and Liverpool governments.



Lord Grenville (left office 25 March 1807)

In 1807, when he left the premiership, aged 47, he had more experience of high office than any other frontbench politician on either side. He was respected rather than liked: he lacked the personal qualities to inspire or charm his followers, and had instead a cold and impersonal style. But he stood out for his commanding parliamentary presence and intellectual stature and openness to new ideas. His election (in a hard-fought contest) as Chancellor of Oxford University in 1809 was, says Jupp, ‘a testimony to his standing in terms of his experience, his knowledge of affairs, and his weight amongst the aristocracy’. Although he led the minority wing of the opposition alliance, the leader of the bigger Foxite group, Earl Grey, was adamant that Grenville should be the Whig leader and showed no desire to replace him. On the more negative side of the ledger, however, were his poor relations with the King and the Prince of Wales, neither of whom wanted to see him back in office if they could help it. The unpopularity and notorious greed (for sinecures and honours) of the wider Grenville/ Temple/Buckingham family interest weakened his influence. Sitting in the Lords, he found it difficult to direct opposition affairs in the Commons (where the party was much stronger). On top of it all was the sense that his heart was not in it: a compound of misgivings about forming a systematic opposition, already-fulfilled ambition (‘nothing left to achieve’), concerns about his health and ‘peace of mind’, and a ‘reluctance to accept office or to commit himself to anything more than short bursts of parliamentary activity’.17 On a number of occasions between 1809 and 1812 the Whigs had a chance to return to office but the opportunity passed because the terms were not right or the government staggered on. Grenville himself could be blamed for mishandling one of these occasions, in January–February 1811, when the ‘Regency crisis’ following George III’s renewed madness gave the Prince of Wales an opportunity to ditch Perceval’s government and instal his Whig friends. Grenville managed to baffle, alienate and annoy both the Prince and his own senior colleagues by his manoeuvres over the provisions for a Regency and by some rather grubby haggling over wanting to keep his lucrative sinecure if and when he became prime minister (at one point he even suggested running the government as Home Secretary rather than First Lord of the Treasury to keep his hands on the valuable Auditorship). Perceval’s government was allowed to continue in office and in the following year when the prime minister was assassinated Grenville and Grey rebuffed attempts to form part of a coalition government under Lord Wellesley, and Liverpool took office.18 Grenville tried to hand over the leadership in November 1812 but Grey declined it. He continued therefore as Whig leader for another five years after 1812, but his influence declined and he found himself increasingly isolated and at odds with the party. He was active and energetic in promoting his economic views (a subject on which he was well-informed and




where he was strongly committed to the free-market doctrines of Adam Smith), advocating free trade and retrenchment, restoration of the gold standard, and tax cuts, and he fervently opposed the introduction of the Corn Laws in 1815. He did much to give the Whigs an economic programme. But his support for the restoration of the Bourbons and the renewal of the war against Napoleon in 1815, together with his backing for the Liverpool government’s tough line on law and order and its crackdown on domestic dissent and radicalism (including in 1817 the suspension of Habeas Corpus), opened up a serious breach with Grey and the bulk of the party. In May 1817 he finally bowed out of the leadership and made it known he would not accept office again.19 Grenville cut his links with party politics and acted as an independent, declaring in January 1818 his ‘total abstinence from all pretensions to lead, from all duty to follow, from all political intrigue, and all party connexion’. For the next five to six years he continued to devote considerable time and attention to politics and even after 1823, when his health sharply deteriorated, he still obsessively followed political events. The small group of Grenvillites went its own way, entering government in 1821. In November 1820 he turned down an offer from the new King George IV to replace Liverpool and form a government, advising him to settle his differences with his ministers. He remained active in the Lords, sitting on committees and weighing in with speeches on great issues of the day, such as the social and political unrest, economic and financial policy, slavery, free trade, Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform. He made his last speech on 21 June 1822 in a debate on a bill to enable Catholic peers to sit in the Lords. He was delighted when Wellington enacted Catholic emancipation in 1829 and believed there was no alternative to Grey’s Reform Bill in 1831, though he opposed some of its provisions and could not bring himself to vote for it.20 Outside politics Grenville devoted more and more time to his private life with his wife, family and friends, his estates, and to his wide-ranging reading and writing in his magnificent library. Although it had elements of a family alliance on business terms at the start, his marriage became extremely close and successful, though he and his wife had no children. She inherited substantial property and estates in Cornwall (nearly 20,000 acres) to add to his property in Buckinghamshire (increasing to 2,600 acres by 1815). Grenville had devoted much effort and resources to improving his estates and his house at Dropmore, developing the latter’s grounds with extensive plantations and building famous gardens (landscape gardening was one of his real passions – it was said that at Dropmore he had ‘found a wilderness and left a paradise’). Grenville was far from poor but in the decade after his premiership his finances were often strained, though they improved after 1816 and his income was about £12,000 a year by 1830 (his sinecure accounting for a third). He was a considerable classical scholar and



50 After Number 10

in his retirement published (in 1824) a volume of translations in Latin from English, Greek and Italian together with other essays and pamphlets on economic and historical subjects.21 For most of his life Grenville had enjoyed robust good health but he went downhill after 1823 when he had a paralytic stroke (a second occurred in 1827) and never fully regained his strength or freedom of movement. He had sold his London house in 1823 and now visited town only rarely, living quietly in the country. By the 1830s he was complaining of decreasing ‘firmness of mind’ and he had another stroke in October 1833 before dying at Dropmore, aged 74, on 12 January 1834.22

The Duke of Portland (resigned 4 October 1809) Portland headed two short-lived governments, 24 years apart, in 1783 and in 1807–09. On both occasions he was more of an aristocratic figure-head and not really a ‘prime minister’ in any meaningful sense. As a First Lord of the Treasury in the House of Lords he lacked direct control over the key sources of authority available to those PMs in the Commons who were able to be Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House. He was overshadowed by more powerful and thrusting personalities in both the FoxNorth coalition in 1783 and after 1807. He was a poor speaker – virtually ‘a parliamentary mute’ according to his biographer David Wilkinson – who attended the Lords on only 15 occasions during his second premiership and did not make any speech at all in that period. Age and serious incapacitating ill-health made him even more of a nominal rather than a real head of government second time around. He was, says Wilkinson, ‘worse than useless’ as prime minister 1807–09, failing to direct policy, a mere spectator in a ‘government of departments’, ignored by his fractious colleagues and sometimes not even told about Cabinet meetings, and someone who also ‘bungled the lesser role of conciliator’ as personal feuds and rivalries, along with positioning for the succession, eventually tore the ministry apart. 23 Portland should not be completely written off. He spent nearly 50 years in active politics and was an effective political organiser and party manager, succeeding his patron Rockingham as Whig leader on the latter’s death in 1782 before moving over to support Pitt in the 1790s. In between his two premierships he was an effective, able and hard-working Home Secretary, in Pitt’s government, 1794–1801, taking a repressive hardline to defend the established social and political order and sanctioning the wholesale bribery of Irish MPs with secret service money to help push through the Union of the British and Irish parliaments. Portland stayed on in government under Addington after 1801 and when Pitt returned to power in 1804–06, switching to the post of Lord President of the Council from the summer of 1801 and serving in the Cabinet as a




minister without portfolio from January 1805, but playing only a limited role. In his sixties and in poor and worsening health, he had been thinking of retirement for some time, and Pitt’s death in January 1806 and the dissolution of his government would have provided a good moment finally to bow out. In that year he endured an emergency operation to remove kidney stones, stoically going under the surgeon’s knife without anaesthetic. But a sense of duty to the King and the agreement of the leading Pittites to unite under his nominal leadership prevented him from quitting the scene. His second government was starting to fall apart with Cabinet tensions, plots and infighting (two ministers, Canning and Castlereagh, even fought a duel) when Portland was suddenly stricken by an apoplectic seizure on 11 August 1809; he made a partial recovery after this stroke but his retirement was now inevitable and he tendered his resignation on 6 September, formally staying in office until his successor, Spencer Perceval, took over on 4 October. Portland had agreed to remain in the Cabinet, without portfolio, but only 26 days later, on 30 October 1809, he died at Bulstrode, his country house, at the age of 71, after undergoing an operation to remove a large kidney stone. He had a private burial at St Marylebone Church in London. He had never been as rich as other grandees and often had serious financial problems, leaving debts of over £500,000 at his death (equivalent to around £20 million today).

Spencer Perceval (assassinated 11 May 1812) Spencer Perceval is the only British prime minister to have been assassinated: shot dead in the lobby of the House of Commons on 11 May 1812.24 He was 49 years old and had been prime minister for just two years and 221 days. His assassin, John Bellingham, was a deranged bankrupt merchant consumed by a grudge against the British government, which he felt had not helped him or compensated him after he had been imprisoned in Russia. Bellingham, who was hanged a week after the murder, claimed at his trial that he had not been specifically planning to shoot Perceval but would have shot Lord Granville Leveson Gower, the former ambassador to St Petersburg, if he had the chance. Perceval had been seen in 1809 as a compromise figure and perhaps a stopgap prime minister, a steady plodder, known for his strong conservative/ reactionary views, fervent evangelicalism and personal integrity. Like his patron William Pitt he died virtually penniless and stood out for his refusal to enrich himself from the public purse. His government had faced daunting challenges and problems, above all the war with Napoleon, and it had not been expected to last long. But its fortunes had improved, and Perceval himself had grown in office, had been determined and resilient, had come



52 After Number 10

to exercise a firm control over the Commons and the Cabinet, was politically secure, and was cut down at the height of his powers when he could have reasonably expected several more years in government. The assassination panicked the authorities and was greeted by mob disturbances in London and by bonfires and celebrating crowds in economically hard-pressed towns in the Midlands. It was thought the government might collapse, but after a period of uncertainty Lord Liverpool emerged as the new prime minister and Tory rule continued for 15 more years. Perceval’s family refused the offer of a public funeral in Westminster Abbey and he was buried in the family vault at Charlton, Kent. Parliament provided for his large family: his widow, Jane Perceval, was voted a pension of £2,000 a year (she later remarried and lived until 1844) and a grant of £50,000 was made for the support of the 12 Perceval children.

Lord Liverpool (left office 9 April 1827) Liverpool spent 15 years as prime minister (1812–27), the third longestserving prime minister, behind Pitt the Younger and Walpole. He had assumed that office one day after his 42nd birthday and there has not been a younger prime minister since. The long years in government – encompassing the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, post-war economic problems and unrest, and the more prosperous and stable 1820s – had been turbulent and stressful and had taken their toll on Liverpool. An effective administrator and an emollient political manager, he was always highlystrung, anxious, irritable and temperamental, and was suffering from increasingly poor health in the second half of his premiership (thrombophlebitis in his legs and a developing heart condition). Norman Gash argued ‘after fifteen years his administration was more popular in the country, more firmly entrenched in the good opinion of Parliament and the Crown, than at any previous time. It came to an end not because it lost the favour of the King or of the legislature but because the Prime Minister’s health made it impossible for him to serve any longer.’25 ‘Like Pitt, Fox, and Canning’, noted Sir Charles Petrie, ‘he was to die at an age when a later generation of politicians considered themselves still in the prime of life.’26 On a number of occasions it had looked as if Liverpool might have quit office: after the death of his first wife in 1821, worried by his health in 1824, and when a Catholic emancipation measure was nearly carried in 1825. At the end of 1826 he told his Chancellor of the Exchequer that he was thinking of resigning before it was too late for him to enjoy the pleasures of retirement, though that mood did not seem to last long. An unsociable man, with hardly any interests outside politics, Liverpool would not have known what to do with himself once off the ministerial treadmill. ‘Ld. Liverpool could not exist out of office’, one of his ministers had said;




‘he has no habits of any but official employment’, said another, ‘and I cannot imagine him being happy in retirement’.27 Ministers were very conscious it would be difficult to replace him. Factional, policy and ideological tensions were building up in the last years of the government (along liberal Tory versus ‘ultra’ lines), complicated by personal rivalries and jealousies. The prime minister felt the end of his ministry was not far off, likely to be triggered by divisions over Catholic emancipation. A ‘blow up’ was on the cards once the unifying figure of Liverpool left the scene.28 That came suddenly on 17 February 1827 when he suffered a massive stroke and was for a while paralysed down one side and incapable of speech. There was no immediate resignation but the political world (where, it was noted, ‘there was not only no grief, but not even a decent pensiveness’ about Liverpool the man29) was consumed by speculation and by manoeuvring for the succession. It was soon obvious there was no hope of a recovery and Liverpool formally left office on 9 April 1827 (unable to tender any advice as to who should succeed him). He lingered for 20 more months, a wreck of a man, suffering another stroke in July 1827, ‘a mental and physical shadow forgotten by the world’30 and unable to play any part in politics, before dying at the age of 58 after a third stroke on 4 December 1828. By then Canning, his immediate successor, had died, Goderich’s government had ignominiously collapsed, and Wellington was struggling with Tory divisions. There was to be no strong, stable and successful Tory government after Liverpool’s departure from office until 1841. Circumstances meant that Liverpool had no chance of playing an elder statesman role, helping out his Tory successors in the late-1820s, but it is likely that the party splits and the problems they faced would have been too much for them anyway. Almost as soon as he was off the stage Liverpool seemed a figure from the past, to belong to an old and disappearing political world. Disraeli later (wrongly) wrote him off as a reactionary and mediocre figure. But those who served with him knew what they had lost. Five future prime ministers served under Liverpool, and the ideas and approach of Peel, his ‘greatest pupil’, and the work of Peel’s government in the 1840s, were greatly influenced and shaped by his experiences under Liverpool.31

George Canning (died in office 8 August 1827) Canning died in office, aged 57, in 1827 after only four months (119 days) as prime minister, making him the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. A brilliant, ambitious, controversial and divisive figure, his career had had a snakes-and-ladders quality and he might well have reached Number 10 much earlier but for the mistrust he aroused. His historical reputation rests more on his achievements as one of the great



54 After Number 10

Foreign Secretaries rather than for his ill-starred and abruptly truncated premiership (April–August 1827). Canning took on the premiership already bowed down by stress, overwork and serious illness. His health had been progressively deteriorating through the 1820s, with disabling attacks of gout, bowel and chest pains, and fevers. He caught a severe chill at a royal funeral in January 1827 from which he never fully recovered and many observers during his premiership were struck by how ill he looked, as if he was on his last legs. By the summer he was worse and at his last meeting with the King, on 30 July, Canning said he did not know what was wrong with him but he was ill all over. He died from what his doctors said was inflammation of the liver and lungs, at Chiswick, on 8 August, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.32 It is a matter of speculation what might have happened had Canning lived longer. His government had been an uneasy and shaky-looking coalition of liberal Tories and moderate Whigs, formed after Liverpool’s stroke and resignation. The Tory party had split, and half the old Cabinet and many other ministers had walked out and refused to serve under Canning because of his commitment to Catholic emancipation. He faced strong opposition from the main body of Whigs under Grey. The big issue of parliamentary reform, which Canning opposed, loomed ahead. Goderich, his successor, could not fill Canning’s shoes and within a few months of his death the coalition fell apart and the Tories came back in for a few more years under Wellington. In the years ahead the Canningites broke up and ended up in different places on the political spectrum – some with the Whigs, others back with the Tories. Canning’s widow was made a Viscountess in her own right in 1828, and an annual pension of £3,000 was granted to his family. His youngest son, to whom the peerage passed, later had a political career, serving in minor ministerial posts and finally becoming governor-general of India (1856–62).

Lord Goderich (resigned 8 January 1828) Frederick Robinson, Viscount Goderich, found himself an ex-prime minister at the age of just 45, ignominiously and humiliatingly bundled out of office on 8 January 1828 after only 130 days, his government, uniquely, never even facing parliament in that time. Goderich was an experienced minister, an amiable and popular parliamentarian, a flexible and moderate liberal-conservative, and a seemingly acceptable compromise figure after Canning’s death. But he was undermined by the absence of consistent royal support and a stable base of party support, and by Cabinet feuding and infighting, all of which cruelly exposed his limitations. He lacked the strength of personality and the toughness to impose himself on events and to lead a government. In the end he was effectively dismissed by the King and, breaking down in tears at his final audience, had to borrow the




monarch’s handkerchief. He quickly rebuilt his career, however, continuing to be active in frontbench politics for 20 more years and holding ministerial office for over eight years after his disastrous stint in Number 10. On top of his political problems Goderich’s grip on power had been weakened by personal problems. That his wife, whom he had married in 1816, was an heiress might have been one of her attractions to a man who, as a peer’s younger son, lacked any substantial resources of his own (though he was to inherit £50,000 when his mother died in 1830). They became a devoted couple, though Lady Sarah Goderich was to prove, it has been argued, ‘a very serious handicap’ to him. She has been described as being ‘demanding, neurotic and hypochondrial’. She certainly seems to have suffered mental illness and depression and at times to have been, as one of Goderich’s colleagues put it, ‘all but crazy’. The deaths of the poor woman’s first two children (an 11-year old daughter dying in 1826, only ten months before Goderich became PM) and then severe post-natal depression following on the birth of a son who was born in Downing Street in October 1827 (who grew up to have a long and distinguished political career of his own as a Liberal Cabinet minister), doubtless explains much. It was all too much for him and, exhausted, stressed and depressed by his political and personal tribulations, Lord Goderich left office a broken man.33 Escape from Number 10 seems, within a short while, to have restored the health and spirits of both Lord and Lady Goderich. Within a week of his departure from office, Goderich was being described as ‘quite another man’, one who ‘sleeps at night now, and laughs and talks as usual’. By May 1828 he was reported as looking ‘happier and fatter than when Prime Minister’. Although she had some relapses over the next couple of years, Lady Sarah seems to have soon started leading ‘a much more normal and useful life’, according to Goderich’s biographer. She once again took a strong interest in her husband’s career and became ‘determined that he should not be completely elbowed out of political life’. In her mid-thirties when Goderich was premier and, in her delusions, convinced she was dying, she eventually outlived her husband by eight years, dying aged 74 in 1867.34 Goderich marked time for a couple of years. He had spent 15 years as a government minister before becoming prime minister and would have been willing to accept ministerial office in the Duke of Wellington’s government (1828–30), but his High Tory successor did not offer him a post. He spoke regularly in the Lords and thought he could establish himself as leader of the Canningites after Huskisson and others had resigned from Wellington’s Cabinet, but they had taken his measure and would not accept him as their leader. But Goderich was by no means politically finished. He was to hold four ministerial positions at different times between 1830 and 1846 – Secretary



56 After Number 10

of State for War and Colonies (1830–33), Lord Privy Seal (1833–34), President of the Board of Trade (1841–43) and President of the Board of Control for India (1843–46) – serving in the Cabinets of a Whig prime minister (Grey) and a Conservative (Peel). Peter Jupp argued ‘the major reason for his longevity as a front-bencher … was that Goderich was an experienced, but comparatively young, member of the House of Lords, whose moderate liberalism held the centre ground in politics. This made him a useful colleague to both whigs and tories in their attempts to create balanced and sustainable ministries.’ He was regarded, says his biographer W.D. Jones, as ‘a useful and experienced statesman and politician’, seen by a contemporary politician, Palmerston, as not up to the topmost job but all the same a congenial personality: ‘an excellent fellow’, ‘an able head of a department’ and ‘a most agreeable colleague’. Goderich, as Dick Leonard puts it, ‘was valued as a Cabinet colleague as somebody who was conscientious, reliable and easy to deal with’. One of the great political survivors, he was over his long career ‘successively, though seldom unequivocally, a Pittite, a Tory, a Canningite, a Whig, a Stanleyite, a Conservative, and a Peelite’. The fluidity of the party system helped him, but ‘though party labels held no charm for [him]’, says his biographer, ‘no one was a more loyal member of a Cabinet’, ready to compromise his views and take on different jobs. A more cutting verdict was the comment of Lord Crewe that Goderich’s ‘political convictions were limited to those announced by the diverse governments of which he was a member’.35 He supported Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and in July 1830, admitting he was ‘not a theoretical reformer’, he came out in support of ‘gradual and practical’ franchise reform, an announcement well-timed to build bridges with the Whigs who came into power that November. Goderich seems to have had a sense of his status and of what was due to him as a former prime minister, declining Grey’s offers of the Board of Trade and the Mastership of the Mint, and holding out for appointment as a Secretary of State, taking the Colonial Office. He did not ‘lead a section of Parliament, nor did he command many votes in either House’, but the Whigs had been so long out of office that Goderich’s ‘business-like habits’ and ‘knowledge of official life’ were attractive assets. Michael Fry argues, however, that Goderich was ‘little trusted in this unfamiliar company’. Although he wanted a major ‘office of business’ like the Home Office, a reluctant and protesting Goderich was forced by Grey in March 1833 to give up the Colonial Office and become Lord Privy Seal. As a consolation prize he was given a step-up in the peerage and became the Earl of Ripon, but was not mollified as he had wanted to become a Knight of the Garter when the next vacancy occurred in that exclusive Order.36 One of the reasons he was unhappy about being reshuffled out of the Colonial Office was he had been working hard there to develop a plan to abolish slavery in the British empire and – sensitive about his public




character after the debacle of his premiership – feared accusations of political cowardice, indecisiveness and weakness, of seeming to run away from difficult issues. Freeing the slaves greatly boosted the political reputation and credit of his successor, Stanley, and Ripon (as we shall now call him) broke down twice when introducing the Emancipation Bill in the Lords in June 1833. Over the next year there was a parting of the ways as Ripon grew disenchanted with Grey’s repeated slights and rebuffs. In January 1834 he refused to attend Cabinet meetings in protest at Grey’s failure to give him a better post, having been passed over for the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland and the Board of Trade. The prime minister’s promise of a more ‘efficient office’ in the future assuaged him for a while but Ripon was moving away from the Whigs and in May 1834 he resigned from the government, along with Stanley and two other ministers, in opposition to Irish Church reform. For the next two years he was an ally of Stanley in the small clique of the so-called ‘Derby Dilly’, out of office and behaving, says Jones, ‘like an independent statesman with a strong bent towards moderate Conservatism’, and by the end of 1836 was back within the Conservative Party fold. The 1830s were a period of domestic happiness and tranquillity for Ripon. His wife was now largely recovered from her illnesses, real and imaginary. In 1834 a fire destroyed Nocton Hall, their country house in Lincolnshire, but they had it rebuilt. Their political and social life in London centred on their houses in Carlton Gardens and Putney Heath. Had Peel succeeded in forming a government in 1839, Ripon would have been in the Cabinet. In 1840–41 he was active in the House of Lords, criticising the Melbourne government’s economic policies. When the Conservatives finally returned to office in 1841, he became President of the Board of Trade – a post he had previously held 20 years before. The young and ambitious William Gladstone was his junior minister (the Vice-President), and their relations were somewhat uneasy. Peel had told Gladstone that Ripon was a ‘master of the craft’ on economic affairs, but Gladstone liked later to say that in three or four weeks he knew enough to know that his ministerial superior ‘knew nothing’ about economics. Ripon (now entering his sixties) should not be written off, though he operated largely at the policy-making level, according to Jones, and left routine work and details to others. He played a role in and made a contribution to the important commercial policies of the government in 1841–42 – the revision of the Corn Laws, the reintroduction of income tax, the Customs Bill and tariff revisions, and the pursuit of trade treaties – handling the relevant legislation in the Lords. By 1843, however, Ripon’s ill health was such that Gladstone was in effective command of the department.37 In May 1843 Ripon was moved to his final post, President of the Board of Control, in charge of Indian affairs. Lack of experience, interest in and knowledge of India meant he made little mark in his three years in this



58 After Number 10

post. He continued to be the chief government spokesman in the Lords on economic affairs, taking charge there of the legislation to abolish the Corn Laws in 1846. By 1846 Ripon (aged 64) was a ‘tired, prematurely aged, and sick old man’. The defeat of Peel’s government in June of that year ended his ministerial career. He made his last speech in the Lords a year later, in May 1847. Lady Ripon fell seriously ill in 1848 and the anxious Ripon did not even appear in the Lords’ voting lobbies that year. But when she recovered in 1849, he returned to the political fray for a while as an active Peelite. By 1851 he had faded from the political scene. He apparently considered himself a supporter of the Peelite-Whig coalition formed by Lord Aberdeen in 1852 rather than of Derby’s Conservatives, but he now played no significant part in politics. His son’s political career started in 1852, with his election as a Liberal MP; he went on to serve in every Liberal government between 1861 and 1908, to become the first Marquess of Ripon, and to be awarded the Order of the Garter his father had coveted. Although a former prime minister who enjoyed good relations with other party and parliamentary leaders, the Earl of Ripon was not looked to as an elder statesman by the Palace, or trusted by Victoria and Albert, as an adviser during the various ministerial crises of the 1850s.38 Ripon’s health was poor for the last few years of his life. His son noted in 1855 that ‘my father is being greatly injured by a variety of doctors pulling different ways’. There were signs of senility and of failing mental powers.39 He died, aged 76, on 28 January 1859 at his house in Putney, having fallen ill with a pulmonary disorder and then contracting what was described as ‘influenza’. He was buried at Nocton Hall in Lincolnshire. He had been a hopeless premier – Huskisson once told Gladstone that Goderich ‘would not do’ as prime minister because ‘he had not “devil” enough’.40 He was a solid, hard-working, pragmatic and competent minister and administrator. He was someone who was not shipwrecked by his failures in Number 10, and while there were no great achievements in his political ‘afterlife’, he still found a useful role to play as an ex-prime minister.

Duke of Wellington (resigned 16 November 1830) Wellington was famously indifferent to public opinion, which may have been just as well given the swings in his popularity after he left the premiership in 1830. For a few years, during the reform crisis of 1831–32, he was a ‘bogy to the mob’, rampaging crowds twice smashing the windows of Apsley House, his London home, which Wellington was sure they intended to destroy, and on one occasion the mob had to be seen off by blunderbuss-firing servants. A large and threatening crowd followed him around the city, hooting, throwing stones and trying to pull him off his horse. The Duke always maintained his cool and imperturbable pose but when there




were rumours he was in danger of assassination he took to carrying a brace of pistols beside him in his carriage, with an armed servant on the box. On a journey through Kent a volunteer escort riding alongside him carrying pistols and horsewhips provided security. Yet within a year or two this tide of unpopularity seems to have passed and the Duke’s unique status as a national icon was restored. It was not so much ‘popularity’ as ‘reverence’, noted one contemporary. His public appearances were now greeted enthusiastically: crowds would cheer and wave handkerchiefs to salute the great man; hats would be doffed as he passed by ‘as if he had been a king’. The Duke normally purported not to notice the acclaim but, if a crowd outside his house began to cheer him, he liked sometimes ironically to raise his hat and gesture towards the iron shutters he had had fixed to his windows. At his death in 1852 one and a half million people lined the route to pay their respects at what has been called ‘probably the most ornate and spectacular funeral ever seen in England’.41 When he left office, aged 61, on 16 November 1830, Wellington had been prime minister for just two years and ten months (since January 1828). The victor of Waterloo was a great soldier but did not have the personality or political skills to be a success in Number 10, though his government carried Catholic Emancipation. Tired, frustrated and disillusioned, regretting having become prime minister in the first place, he had said he was anxious to quit office a year before he did so, and at one point had to be talked out of throwing in the towel by resigning and making way for Robert Peel. With unhappy, divided and resentful Tories behind him the end came after he made a defiant and provocative anti-parliamentary reform speech that played into the Whig opposition’s hands and was followed by defeat on a vote on the civil list that showed the government had lost control of the Commons. Although a few months afterwards he was blaming Peel for persuading him to resign and claiming he regretted having done so, Wellington was probably not sorry to be released from his difficulties. He seemed to enjoy his freedom and the pleasures of reading, riding, country life and the company of friends. Time did not hang upon his hands and he was reported to be ‘enjoying his idleness’. A week after leaving office he went to Hampshire, where he was Lord-Lieutenant, to put some backbone into the local gentry and magistrates, organise the militia, and lead the rapid putting-down of the ‘Captain Swing’ disturbances, rioting and unrest in the county. He was less comfortable or sure about what to do, however, in the unfamiliar role of an opposition politician. He would not retire into private life, but said he would remain by position and by duty a public man ‘so long as life and intellect last’. He saw himself as a servant of crown and country and, while it was important to try to keep the party together, he would not lead what he saw as ‘factious opposition’ to the King’s ministers. He would censure and oppose when necessary, but equally would support



60 After Number 10

and assist the government’s measures if he thought it right to do so. This stance often left the more partisan Tory ‘Ultras’, many of whom felt he had betrayed them over Catholic Emancipation, restlessly chaffing at the bit, and led Wellington himself to undertake some abrupt political somersaults.42 Only five months after he had lost office Wellington’s wife, Kitty, died in April 1831. Although they had lately been closer than ever before, the marriage had not been happy or successful. Wellington had long had a reputation as a ladies’ man and was supposed to have had many affairs. He was devastated by the death in 1834 of Mrs Harriet Arbuthnot, who had been a particularly intimate friend and companion (and, many thought, his mistress). (The Duke helped her widower, Charles Arbuthnot, through a nervous breakdown and then gave him a home in his own house for the rest of his life, where he became a friend, adviser and aide.) A number of young women tried hard to become the second Duchess of Wellington but, while the Duke enjoyed his flirtations, none succeeded. One competitor, who pursued him for seven years, was Mary Anne Jervis, over 40 years younger than him, and called ‘the Syren’ because of her beautiful singing voice. Then there was the curious relationship with Miss Anna Maria Jenkins, an intense religious evangelist and do-gooder, to whom he wrote hundreds of letters over a 17-year period – his inability or unwillingness to shake her off indicating something of the old man’s loneliness and his partiality for the company of young, attractive women. Lady Georgiana Fane took compromising letters from the Duke to her lawyers, who advised that she had grounds to sue for breach of promise (no case was brought). In 1847 the 32-year old banking-heiress Angela Burdett-Coutts proposed marriage to the 77-year old Duke, an offer he declined on the grounds that she should not throw herself away on a man old enough to be her grandfather; they remained close and affectionate friends until he died. The British public saw only the public image of the legendary and aloof soldierstatesman, and these strange and colourful adventures were not widely known at the time. Asked what was the best test of a great general, Wellington once answered: ‘To know when to retreat and to dare to do it.’ That was a good description of his political stance too in the years after his premiership for, while he may have often seemed to be an ‘ultra-tory resister’, he was essentially a pragmatic conservative-traditionalist rather than a die-hard or diein-the-last-ditch reactionary. His language about the Whigs’ parliamentary reform bill was vehement and alarmist: it was ‘an evil’ that would mean the overthrow of the whole constitution and the established order, it would lead to revolution, ‘terror’, even ‘civil war’, ‘the people are rotten to the core … [and] are gone mad’. But faced with political pressure for reform, resolute ministers and the King’s support for a reform measure, Wellington made a political retreat from resisting the bill to the utmost to accepting




grudgingly that some sort of reform was inevitable. Having to eat his own words (‘I certainly never will enter the House of Lords from the time that it [the reform bill] passes’, he had declared in March 1831) was perhaps the least painful part of the process. In November 1831 he had let the King know he was ready to ‘assist him’ and serve as prime minister again if he wanted to escape from his Whig ministers. Six months later in May 1832 the King turned to Wellington when Grey resigned after the monarch had refused his demand to create more peers to force the reform bill through the Lords. But the King’s insistence that an extensive measure of reform should be carried put Wellington in a quandary. The Duke now believed (after his own experience in office) that the prime minister must be in the Commons (where the Whigs still had a majority) and that Peel was the man for the job – but he refused the poisoned chalice. Wellington then spent an embarrassing week discovering that other political heavyweights would not serve and he could not himself put a government together. The game was up: the Whigs came back in and Wellington saw that further opposition to the reform bill had to be dropped, persuading colleagues to follow him in abstaining or staying away until it became law.43 Wellington’s relationship with Peel was a crucial aspect of his postpremiership. Peel was 20 years younger than the Duke, had been his Home Secretary and was the leading Conservative in the Commons. In temperament and character they were different but, while each was often critical of the other’s faults and shortcomings and they did not always find it easy to deal with one another, they recognised they had to work together. ‘During this time’, as Douglas Hurd sums it up, ‘they changed places and the junior man became the senior. Each respected the other, and knew that the other was an indispensable colleague. The partnership was not easy; it never broke down, but it often creaked and groaned. The two men came from different backgrounds, had different friends, and found no particular pleasure in each other’s company.’ Peel was greatly put out when Wellington (who had not himself gone to university) was elected in 1834 Chancellor of Oxford University (a post Peel would have liked and filled with distinction). When in government they met regularly in Cabinet but in rocky periods of opposition they sometimes did not see each other for months at a time and relations could be cool. But they agreed on a cautious and moderate approach and trusted each other, and Wellington was loyal and supportive to the man he acknowledged as party leader, prepared to serve under him in government and to work to swing Conservative peers behind his policies.44 In July 1834, when Grey resigned, Wellington and Peel were agreed in turning down an approach from Melbourne, made at the King’s behest, to form a coalition government with the Whigs. But when William IV dismissed the Whigs, that November, Wellington became – in a unique episode on the British political stage – an acting or caretaker prime minister



62 After Number 10

for three weeks (17 November–9 December 1834). Wellington had recommended to the King that Peel should become prime minister but he was in Italy and, while a message was being sent to him and he was travelling back, the Duke took temporary charge of the government and was sworn in as First Lord of the Treasury and Secretary of State. As Lord Rosebery later put it, he acted as ‘a warming-pan for Peel’. He busied himself roving around Whitehall, looking in at the various departments, ensuring things ticked over. There were plenty of jokes about the Duke’s ‘one-man government’ and ‘dictatorship’, but it was in truth a decisive moment of self-abnegation. The suggestion of a Peel premiership and of an interim government under himself came from Wellington, but there were plenty of people who would have accepted, or even preferred, the Duke as prime minister again in his own right. He would not hear of it. The most he would do was to prepare a report for Peel on possible appointments and candidates for office and to start to make preparations for a general election. As Gash says, ‘left to himself Peel might have refused a commission which promised little success’. The Duke at the same time as he definitively passed over the Tory leadership presented his successor with a political fait accompli. But it was a turning point in the remaking of the Tory party.45 Wellington had wanted Lord Aberdeen, who had held the post in his own government in 1828–30, to become Foreign Secretary again but he demurred. The Duke therefore served as Foreign Secretary in Peel’s first ‘Hundred Days’ government (December 1834–April 1835). He was decisive, brisk, to the point and clear in dealing with his departmental business but could not make much of an impact on foreign policy. He disapproved of most of the policies of his predecessor, Palmerston, but the King indicated he wanted the Tories to follow the same foreign policy course as the Whigs and little could be done in just four months in office.46 In opposition from 1835 to 1841 he led the Tories in the Lords and helped Peel loyally, sometimes against his own convictions, to educate and unify the party. Wellington had two main aims: first, to control and limit dissent from the more right-wing Tory ‘Ultras’ against Peel’s more liberalconservative and moderate-reformist line, and second, to avoid a major clash between the Commons and the Lords that might provoke moves for the abolition of the second chamber. This stance often meant helping to support Melbourne’s government against radicals and extremists on its own side, and sometimes pulling his punches as when he refused to go for the jugular when the government was exposed on the Canadian issue in 1838. Wellington had great prestige and exerted a personal dominance, but the Tory ‘Ultras’, desperate to fight the Whigs tooth and nail, were often restive and unhappy: ‘Westminster Abbey is yawning for him’, one once complained. Thus the Duke did not like municipal reform and the creation of ‘a little Republic in every town’, but made his followers fall into line behind Peel, who did not want the Whigs’ legislation wrecked. Gash put it




neatly: ‘in contrast to his military career, Wellington in politics rendered his best services as a second in command’. In 1839 he again refused the premiership (citing his age, 70, and health) when Melbourne resigned and advised Queen Victoria to send for him, recommending she send for Peel instead and even refusing to promise her he would become Foreign Secretary again on the grounds that a prime minister must be free to make his own appointments (although Peel was forced to throw in the cards after a few days). Wellington supported Peel during this ‘Bedchamber crisis’ but he was reluctant to see a change of government and new ministers forced on ‘this poor girl’, as he described the Queen, explaining ‘I have no small talk and Peel has no manners.’47 Wellington’s health took a turn for the worse as he entered his seventies. His deafness became worse, he frequently fell asleep, arthritis gave him a trademark stoop, and he became more irritable and forgetful. He suffered a series of strokes and seizures in 1839, 1840 and 1841. ‘What a stride old age has made upon him’ commented one observer. He still lived a pretty Spartan life and pushed himself hard, however, despite grumbling about ‘the saddle upon my back’, often standing up at his desk and working long hours, dealing with his voluminous correspondence on matters great and small (adding his own pungent comments to the forms he had had printed to answer common queries and invitations). Work and activity were the best tonic and, while now an old man, he sometimes showed surprising vitality and strength in the last decade of his life.48 Away from national politics, Wellington accumulated a number of public posts, none of which he treated as empty sinecures. He was a reforming Constable of the Tower of London 1826–52, briskly sorting out problems of corruption, patronage, military security and public health (he ordered the moat, which had been used as a sewer and rubbish pit, to be drained and cleared up). As Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports from 1829 he had wideranging responsibilities over harbour works, life-boats and salvage, channel pilots, local appointments and magistrates. The prerequisites included an official residence at Walmer Castle (which became a favourite residence) and a £3,000 salary, which he refused. As Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire for 32 years he was an active and influential figure in the local government of his home county. Wellington had been voted huge amounts by parliament as grants, annuities and prize money during the Napoleonic Wars, and Stratfield Saye, his Hampshire estate, had been purchased for him by the nation. He was a paternalistic and improving landlord, reinvesting his rents and looking after his tenants. When his agent boasted of buying a new farm for him for far less than its real value, the Duke promptly ordered him to pay the full price. He had estates in Portugal, Spain and Belgium, given to him by their grateful rulers, though they do not seem to have been well run. When the Conservatives returned to power in 1841, Wellington told Peel he was willing to ‘do anything, go anywhere, and hold any office, or no



64 After Number 10

office, as may be thought most desirable’. He was indispensable as the only person who could control and direct the Conservative peers, getting them to swallow things they did not like, but he was no longer up to the demands of a major department. Instead he was appointed a Cabinet minister without portfolio and Leader of the House of Lords. He would be ‘kept in reserve with my hands clear’, as he put it, able to be consulted and offer advice as needed, concentrating on the high politics which interested him and where his experience was valuable, such as defence and security issues, foreign affairs, Ireland and India. He performed well as Leader in the Lords, though he did not receive as much assistance from Cabinet colleagues there as he would have liked and complained that departments did not always keep him properly informed. In 1844 Stanley (the future Earl of Derby) was moved into the House of Lords to add more ministerial muscle to the frontbench and share the parliamentary load. He was the oldest man in the Cabinet (aged 72 in 1841) and treated with respect as a heavyweight elder statesman though he was somewhat detached, as Mather says, from the ‘reforming activity in the fiscal and administrative spheres’ of Peel’s government. Because of his deafness, he always sat in the same place at Cabinet meetings and each minister who had something to say would sit next to him so that he could catch something of the discussion.49 He played a vital role in the Corn Laws crisis of 1845–46. ‘The Duke was against repeal of the Corn Laws’, as Elizabeth Longford put it, ‘but he was more against a split’. He wanted to keep the Corn Laws and was not convinced by the economic arguments for repeal, even in the context of the Irish famine, but stuck to his line that ‘a good government is more important than Corn Laws or any other consideration’. Though he was privately deeply anxious that ‘a great Mistake has been made’, or at any rate ‘a Party mistake’, he would try to keep things together and would not swerve from supporting Peel on political and constitutional grounds. The Cabinet and the party should support the prime minister and he would once again use all his influence to prevent a collision between the Lords and the Commons. For Wellington the issues were party unity and the continuance of the Queen’s government. ‘With all his doubts’, writes Thompson, ‘he was prepared to accept Peel’s judgment, trusting him within the necessities of politics to preserve as much as possible of traditional institutions, privilege and the social structure of the country … Wellington maintained that it was better for inevitable change to be carried out by a sound ministry that would control and limit it than by one eager to push reform as far as possible’.50 The fall of Peel’s government in June 1846 brought to a close the Duke’s ministerial career. It did not mark the end of his public and official life for in an extraordinary move in 1842 he had become commander-in-chief, a post he had earlier held in 1827–28 but had been forced to give up as prime minister, remaining at the Horse Guards as head of the British army until his death




in 1852. Wellington was even prepared to leave the Cabinet to hold a post he thought no one was better fitted for, but Peel was adamant he was too valuable to be lost to the government and so he combined his military and ministerial positions. The advent of a Whig government under Lord John Russell made no difference to him – the Queen made known her strong desire that he continue as commander-in-chief, and Wellington assured Russell that his party-political days were over. He fought hard but unsuccessfully for increased military spending and forces under both the Conservative and the Whig governments and worried over the dangers of a steamship-borne French invasion and the inadequacies of coastal defences. He was in his element masterminding security preparations for the great Chartist demonstration in London in 1848, though it went off quietly in the end. But on matters ranging from the army’s old muskets and the retention of flogging to the purchase of commissions, the appointment of a chief of staff, and military supply and administration arrangements, he was old-fashioned, conservative and an obstacle to overdue and necessary reforms. He should not have held the post as long as he did but retirement was unthinkable for him, and he must bear a big share of responsibility for the military inefficiencies and incompetence revealed during the Crimean War two years after he died.51 Seventy-seven years old when he finally left ministerial office in 1846, Wellington (as he had promised Russell) occupied an independent, nonparty role and did not act politically with the opposition. He maintained good relations with the Whig ministers who, with the Conservatives now bitterly split, offered the best prospect for stability and orderly government. He feared that if the Liberals went into opposition they would join in the Radicals’ ‘agitation’ against the country’s institutions. He hoped and trusted that Stanley (Lord Derby) could reunite the Conservative Party and revive its fortunes, but he stayed out of the protectionist-Peelite conflict, though temperamentally he was closer to the former. He lived to see the Conservatives return to office in February 1852, when Derby formed a short-lived minority government – the famous ‘Who, who?’ ministry, so-called after the Duke’s exclamations as the names of the new ministers were read out to him (‘never heard of the gentleman!’). He continued to attend the Lords regularly and occasionally to speak, mainly on military, Irish and foreign affairs; he made his last speech, on the Militia Bill, on 15 June 1852, only three months before his death. He was still looked to by the Queen and Prince Albert for advice and counsel. ‘Is your Majesty dissatisfied with your ministers?’, he asked when he was called to the Palace during the ministerial crisis of 1851. When the Queen replied, ‘No’, the old Duke shot back, ‘Then you had better keep them’, and that was that.52 He was still taking on new assignments in his last years, becoming Ranger of the Royal Parks in 1850, in which capacity he had a role in the preparations for the Great Exhibition (in Hyde Park).



66 After Number 10

There is a (probably apocryphal) story that when the Queen, all other solutions having failed, asked the Duke how to get rid of the hundreds of sparrows trapped in (and befouling with their droppings) Paxton’s great glass palace, he advised with characteristic directness: ‘Try sparrow-hawks, Ma’am.’ 53 Wellington must have seemed almost indestructible to his contemporaries. Certainly his death at age 83, at Walmer Castle, following a stroke, on 14 September 1852 was sudden and unexpected. His lying-in-state and the spectacle of the magnificent state funeral at St Paul’s Cathedral (he is the only prime minister to be buried there) marked the general sense that a great man, a legendary figure and national hero, had been lost. His passing was more than the death of any old ex-prime minister. ‘One cannot … think of England without him’, the Queen wrote,54 not something commonly said at the death of former prime ministers. Wellington had rendered some of his most signal services to his party and to the country as a former prime minister after 1830, but in a larger sense his career and achievements transcended that category.

Lord Grey (resigned 9 July 1834) In the course of a relatively long life and with a total parliamentary service (Commons and Lords) of nearly 60 years, Grey had only five years in ministerial office (three years and eight months of them as prime minister) – most of his active political life was spent in opposition. During the quarter-century in which he led the opposition before becoming prime minister in November 1830, he frequently expressed a wish to quit politics, often feeling his career had been a failure, complaining he was too old, and insisting he wanted to retire into the pleasures of family life. Yet his strong ambition, vanity and principles kept him in the political game, though for long periods the prospect of office seemed remote. When he eventually became prime minister he was 66. Before he finally left the premiership on 9 July 1834, Grey had several times tried or threatened to resign. The struggle to enact the one great achievement of his ministry – the 1832 Reform Act – was intense and exhausting. In May of that year, when the Cabinet resigned after the King refused Grey’s request to create more peers to overcome opposition in the Lords and Wellington was sent for to attempt to form a government, Grey had mixed feelings about his eviction from office. His great reform looked like it might fail, but he was also worn down by the demands of office and of leading a fractious coalition, and he would have been relieved if Wellington had succeeded. But after a week the Duke failed and Grey was restored to power, securing the vital promise of more creations if necessary (they were not).55 Grey had not even clocked up two years in Downing Street before he was complaining (in September 1832) ‘I feel wearied and oppressed from the




moment that I get up till I go to bed, and I think it will be impossible for me to go through the work of another session’. Tired and depressed, he moaned in early 1833 he saw nobody but ministers and people on business – ‘how sick I am of it and of them’. ‘My plagues multiply’, he sighed. ‘I wonder whether I shall ever again have a night of real rest.’ Cabinet in-fighting, splits and disagreements on foreign and Irish policy questions in particular drove him to despair and to want to throw in the towel. He wanted to resign in the summer of 1833 but his political colleagues would not hear of it and persuaded him to stay on. In January 1834 the King talked him out of another attempted resignation. A further political row over Irish church policy, which exposed deep Cabinet divisions and provoked a total of five ministerial resignations in May–July 1834, was the last straw and, rejecting pleas to reconsider, Grey insisted on resigning.56 On a personal level, Grey’s retirement was genuinely contented. He spent most of his time at his beloved Howick estate in Northumberland with only occasional visits to far-away London to attend the Lords.57 He loved the countryside and passed his time supervising his estate, riding, walking and shooting, playing cards and reading in the evenings, chatting cheerfully with friends, visitors and family. Although he had had several affairs during his life, Grey’s marriage was close and happy, and had produced 15 children, and he was a fond father who enjoyed being at the centre of gatherings of the family clan. ‘I can safely say that not an hour has hung heavy on my hands, or been embittered with regret for the loss of power’, he told one confidant in 1834. A visitor found him ‘all day as gay as possible, and not an atom of that gall he was subject to in earlier life’. The elderly ex-prime minister seemed, in fact, almost playful and ‘the happiest of men’.58 On a political level it was a different story. Although he talked in 1834 about the end of his ‘public life’ and maintained he did not want to return to office, Grey did not want to walk away from politics completely. He strongly defended his government’s record, and stressed the need to draw the line under the Reform Act and resist pressure for further parliamentary or democratic reform. His preferred successor would have been Lord Althorp (Earl Spencer), and he regarded Melbourne as a sort of ‘understudy’ who was not really up to the job. During his first stint in the premiership (July–November 1834) Melbourne seems to have deferred to his old chief, submitting his appointments and proposed measures for approval, with Grey firing off lots of detailed advice and criticism. With Melbourne back in the saddle after April 1835 to 1841, however, Grey became increasingly disillusioned and disenchanted with his successor and with the Whigs in general, who he thought were deserting his principles. His influence declined, though Melbourne still at times put aside his irritation and consulted him, as during the 1839 ‘Bedchamber’ crisis. He came across as touchy, jealous of his successor, resentful and fault-finding, quick to spot



68 After Number 10

supposed slights, and loud in self-justification. Not disguising his unhappiness at the way things were going, but making no allowances for Melbourne’s difficult parliamentary position and shrinking majority, he became alarmed about what he saw as government concessions and pandering to the Radicals and to O’Connell and the Irish. By 1836 Grey’s son noted that the former prime minister ‘has a prejudice against everything the Government does’.59 Grey sometimes liked to give the impression that things would have been different had he still been prime minister but when in April 1835 he was offered the premiership by the King and by the top Whigs, including Melbourne, or failing that the foreign secretaryship, he refused to take office. Melbourne indeed once ruefully remarked that ‘the Greys … in or out were always dissatisfied. When in they wanted to be out, when out they wanted to be in’. Grey had made his eldest son, Henry (Viscount Howick), a junior minister in 1830 and, though he disapproved of his ‘advanced’ liberal views on free trade and the abolition of capital punishment, he wanted to see him promoted into the Cabinet as his ‘agent and watchdog’. Melbourne made Howick wait and then gave him the post of Secretary at War when Grey wanted a more senior post for his heir; when he resigned from the government in 1839, his father was delighted.60 By the late 1830s Grey had given up on the Whigs and had completely lost confidence in Melbourne’s government. He was not, he told his family, ‘aware of any essential points on which my opinions differ from those of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel’. He now saw hardly anything of his old associates and colleagues. He said he regretted putting Lord John Russell in charge of the management of the Reform Bill, calling him ‘a little animal engrossed by an inordinate ambition, of the most narrow and selfish character’. He had always been at root a conservative reformer but by the last years of his life the conservatism dominated and he felt alienated from the political movement he had devoted his career to.61 Grey effectively dropped out of the political world after his son’s resignation from the government. His Northumberland estate and his family absorbed and satisfied him. He remained active and in reasonably good shape into his late seventies but had poor health for the last two years of his life before he died, aged 81, on 17 July 1845.

Lord Melbourne (resigned 30 August 1841) For all his do-nothing approach to politics and policy, lack of interest in political ideas and principles, and apparent indolence (largely a pose), Melbourne showed a remarkable tenacity in hanging onto office, managing nearly seven years as prime minister between 1834 and 1841, with only a brief five-month interruption, when his ministry was dismissed by the king in November 1834. He had been appointed largely as the least-bad option, because Grey resigned and refused to come back, and because he seemed




best able to hold together the competing egos and rival factions of the Whig-Radical-Irish alliance. Melbourne’s government had nearly come to an end in 1839 when he resigned when his parliamentary majority had dramatically slumped on a key vote, but after a few days the Whigs had been put back in by Queen Victoria’s partisanship and her unwillingness to accommodate Peel over Household appointments (the ‘Bedchamber crisis’). Melbourne’s divided, weak and discredited government staggered on, with the Conservatives growing in strength, until it was defeated in a vote of confidence in the Commons in May 1841 and then decisively lost the subsequent general election. Melbourne formally resigned on 30 August 1841. Melbourne was 62 when he left office. He had always been cynical about honours, dismissing them as ‘geegaws’ – ‘don’t you think those ribbons are rather over-valued?’ – and he refused both a step-up in the peerage (to an Earldom; he was himself a Viscount) and the Garter (‘what I like about the Order of the Garter’, he once sneered, ‘is that there is no damned merit about it’.)62 He had increasingly been feeling the strain and his health had been deteriorating as prime minister with attacks of gout, biliousness, lumbago, bowel and bladder problems, and insomnia – all aggravated by his habit of drinking two or three bottles of wine a day. He found the release of pressure a relief and for the first year out of office seemed more cheerful, relaxed and fitter than for a long time (‘being out of office is much healthier than being in’, he told the Queen). He gamely insisted he was happy at being free from the burdens of office, but his smile, one of his former ministers noticed, was not that of a happy man. When he talked about ‘the fun of opposition’, no one was really fooled by his careless manner. Melbourne had long feared the loss of office and bitterly regretted it when it happened. The loss of occupation, hard work, authority and status created a psychological and emotional void that little in his private life could fill.63 He had been scarred for life by his disastrous marriage to the notorious Lady Caroline Lamb, who died in 1828, and their handicapped son had died in 1836. One thing he particularly missed was regular contact with Queen Victoria, with whom he had become besotted since she came to the throne aged just 18 in 1837. Their relationship had become close, the elderly prime minister relishing his role as adviser, mentor and close companion, and she regarding him as a sort of father figure. There was calculation of political advantage on his part.64 In 1839 her actions in rejecting Peel’s ‘Bedchamber’ nominations, and Melbourne’s in advising her she could do so, although having resigned he had no right to give that advice, were unconstitutional. For about a year over 1841–42, Melbourne as an ex-prime minister and the Queen again sailed close to – if not actually over – the boundaries of what was constitutional. There could have been a political and constitutional crisis, with Melbourne being attacked as a latter-day Lord Bute wielding ‘secret influence’, had his influence over the young monarch and at Court



70 After Number 10

not been ‘snuffed out’ by anxious Palace advisers and by Prince Albert (whom Victoria had married in 1840).65 No one could have complained if Melbourne and the Queen had just swopped social tittle-tattle and personal news. Instead she actively sought his views and passed government documents to him, asking for his comments, while he offered solicited and unsolicited advice on Peel’s Cabinet and diplomatic appointments, government policies and political developments. The young Queen did not find Peel a likeable character and was (at that stage in her life) anti-Conservative in her views, and Melbourne could not and would not pull back to a more ‘correct’ relationship with the sovereign. Once they realised what was going on, as the stream of letters passed back and forth, Palace advisers became seriously worried. The secret exchanges were not just indiscreet, they were constitutional dynamite. If Peel had discovered the Queen was taking advice on affairs of state from anybody but him, as her prime minister, he would have immediately resigned. Melbourne was repeatedly warned about his continued meddling and the potential undermining of his successor. His response that he would always advise the Queen to stick by her government ‘unless he saw the time had arrived at which it might be resisted’ did not reassure the Palace. At times Melbourne seemed to half-acknowledge the political and constitutional dangers for the Queen, but the developing problem was ended only when he was knocked out of action by a stroke in the autumn of 1842. Their correspondence dwindled and they saw relatively little of each other, and it became painfully obvious to him that the Queen no longer treated him with any special attention. He had become a figure from the past for her. It was bound to happen in the end, after her marriage to Albert and as she got used to new ministers. It was a terrible personal loss for Melbourne; the occasional meeting with the Queen or even just her name coming up in conversation could in the last few years of his life reduce him to tears. Melbourne’s severe stroke in October 1842 was a turning point. He made only a slow recovery and was left permanently weakened by its after-effects. He suddenly became an old man, a semi-invalid, fussing about his poor health but eating and drinking much more than was sensible, much weakened and slower physically and mentally, his horizons narrowing. He was now forced to spend most of his time quietly at his country house (Brocket), looked after by his family (his sister, who was now Palmerston’s wife, and his brother and his young wife), something that, as a gregarious man who had always lived in and for London ‘Society’, he found hugely boring and depressing.66 Politically there was a similar process of decline and marginalisation, a sense of the shutters closing. Few people believed he could or would return to power as prime minister: ‘10 men would not follow a future government of his’, commented one insider. In August 1841 Melbourne told Prince




Albert’s private secretary he did not think he would ever be back in government. But he made it clear he intended to stay in public life, and that his ‘hat’, as he said in a speech after leaving Number 10, was still ‘in the ring’. Until his stroke he remained active and influential in Whig politics. He was still a leading figure in his party and in the House of Lords. There were discussions and consultations with other top men like Russell and Palmerston on political tactics and policies. He was not in favour of the Whigs taking an aggressive line in opposition and was anxious for them to avoid making strong commitments of their own. In 1842 he spoke in the Lords 12 times, but after his illness he spoke on only two more occasions, in 1844 and 1846, and they were not ‘political’ speeches.67 Serious politics were finished for Melbourne after his stroke, but he would not really recognise or accept the fact. He was becoming increasingly at odds with his own party and with Russell because of his strong opposition to the repeal of the Corn Laws, the central issue of the day, and one on which Russell supported radical change. Melbourne resented the younger man stepping into his shoes as Whig leader but could do nothing about it. Russell took care to treat him with consideration, to stay in touch and to consult, but Melbourne became increasingly alienated, critical and scathing. Sometimes he was gloomily conscious of his diminished powers and capabilities, but at other times he would or could not face the truth and fantasised about a return to power. In December 1845, when it looked as if Russell might become prime minister, the Palace and the Whig leaders handled him with kid gloves, making soothing comments about valuing his advice and wanting to find him a role, expressing regrets about his health. He might have been made Lord President as a consolation prize but he ruled himself out. In 1846 when Russell finally formed a government, Melbourne would have liked at least the offer of a Cabinet seat but it did not come, and Russell had to explain apologetically he did not think his health was up to even the duties of a non-departmental job, which Melbourne now acknowledged. His unhappiness and political irrelevance had been underlined by the way in which, while not wanting to support Peel’s decision to abolish the Corn Laws (carried only with the help of Whig votes), but equally not wanting to come out against and embarrass his own colleagues, he had ended up casting a proxy vote in the Lords for repeal, despite his well-known opposition to abolition. He became bitter and disloyal about Russell and the Whig government. Russell’s leadership was ‘hasty and reckless … erroneous and mischievous’, he had not shown ‘as much courage as he expected of him’. In June 1848 he gloated about the government becoming ‘very unpopular’ and even said if it fell he would advise the Queen to send for Peel.68 By that time Melbourne was a half-forgotten figure. His health had continued to deteriorate and he was living out an isolated and melancholy retirement at Brocket in Hertfordshire, his moods unpredictable, and brood-



72 After Number 10

ing on the past. Many of his old friends had died, he had fallen out with others, and felt neglected by those who were left. Although a wealthy man (his estates giving him a disposable income of about £13,000 a year – about £700,000 in today’s money), he had always been careless about the management of his finances and convinced himself he was in serious difficulties and in danger of bankruptcy. He had always lived extravagantly, up to the limit of his income, doing little to develop the Melbourne estate, and in the 1840s was paying out £800 a year on doctors (equivalent to over £40,000 today) and £1,000 a year (over £50,000 today) to one of his former lovers (Lady Branden) to keep out of the way in Switzerland, while also being badgered for money by another (Mrs Norton). He wrote to the Queen in February 1848 asking for a state pension of two or three thousand pounds, but was turned down, though the Queen privately loaned him £10,000.69 It was embarrassing for his friends and family who worried that he was becoming rather unbalanced and decrepit. The end came quickly. He had another stroke in April 1848 and suffered further seizures in October and November, before dying aged 69 on 24 November 1848. There were none of the religious pieties of some prime ministers, for while he supported the institution of an established church, Melbourne had never pretended to anything more than an academic curiosity about Christianity – he was a man who had remarked that ‘things have come to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade the sphere of private life’.70 There was no great public funeral, just a low-key service and burial in the family vault at Hatfield church.




4

Robert Peel (resigned 29 June 1846) The break between Sir Robert Peel and his party, which cast him out of office in 1846, had been coming for a long time. Peel had been a dominant figure as prime minister 1841–46 (having earlier had a brief four-month spell as PM in 1835–36) but he was a quintessential man of government and an executive politician, and was neglectful of the political and personal arts of party management. A cold, remote and high-handed leader, he rather took his backbenchers for granted. His centrist/liberal conservatism put him at ideological odds with many of his followers representing other groups and tendencies in the Tory party. Divisions, discontent and dissension built up across a range of issues (economic, Irish and social policy) after 1841, with Peel forcing his party into line and sometimes threatening to resign if they refused to support him. With party morale and unity cracking Peel’s determination to repeal the Corn Laws was the final straw. He pushed his party too far, two-thirds of Tory MPs voting against him, and repeal was carried only with the votes of Liberals and Radicals. When vengeful rebels then voted with the Liberals to defeat him on an Irish bill, Peel resigned and Lord John Russell and the Whigs took office. By 1846 Peel was tired and battered, worn out by the burdens of office and resentful at the bitter and highly personal attacks made on him. He made it abundantly clear to friends and supporters that he had no appetite or desire for the premiership or for party leadership again. The loss of power, he insisted, was a ‘blessing’. Heading the government had been a ‘painful and thankless’ task. Rather than regretting expulsion from office, he rejoiced in it as ‘the greatest relief from an intolerable burden’. He said he was determined not to resume office. He would be only a head of government and that role demanded more ‘youth’, ‘ambition’ and ‘love of official power’ than he now possessed. He intended to ‘keep aloof from party combinations’ and would never be ‘the tool of a party’ again. His contempt for the Tory protectionist backbenchers who had brought him 74



Peel to Rosebery

down was palpable: they were ‘men with great possessions and little foresight’, it would be an ‘odious servitude’ to submit to the opinions of ‘men who have not access to your knowledge, and could not profit by it if they had, who spend their time in eating and drinking, and hunting, shooting, gambling, horse-racing, and so forth’. There was too much truth in the saying ‘the head of a party must be directed by the tail’, he argued, the problem being that ‘heads see and tails are blind’.1 ‘I find the day too short for my present occupations’, Peel wrote a few months after leaving office, ‘which consist chiefly in lounging around my library, directing improvements, riding with the boys and my daughter, and pitying Lord John and his colleagues’. Lady Julia Peel was not a ‘political wife’ and was not unhappy at his resignation. With his family and close friends Peel could be unbuttoned, displaying a taste for humorous anecdotes. He was rich, owning a 9,000-acre estate and enjoying an income of £40,000 a year (equivalent to over £2.5 million today); at the end of his life he left a personal fortune of £120,000 (apart from the entailed estate which was worth about one million pounds). He was a model landlord, humane and actively engaged with improvements and scientific agricultural development. A notable art patron and connoisseur, he had built up a large private collection and was a trustee of the National Gallery, later home to many of his paintings. A man of wide interests, he was an active and enthusiastic member of the commission set up in 1850 to plan the Great Exhibition. Only 58 when he left office, he suffered from chronic pains in his left ear and head, linked to a shooting accident in the 1820s, but was otherwise still robust.2 At one point, deeply wounded and angry at the protectionists’ attacks on him, he had considered leaving parliament. But Peel was not ready for a busy non-political retirement. He wanted to stay in public life but in an independent political role. He was still ‘indisputably the first man in the country’, a dominant figure on the political scene, and someone who overshadowed Russell, the new prime minister. But he was in the late-1840s to find himself in ‘an impossible and unsatisfactory situation’, as Robert Blake put it, neither leading a party nor allowing others to lead it, and ‘his attitude was an anachronism in an age of increasing party domination’. ‘The position of Sir Robert Peel in the last four years of his life’, Gladstone once insisted, ‘was a thoroughly false position.’3 ‘An ex-prime minister of Peel’s standing’, argued Norman Gash, ‘especially when surrounded by a devoted and ambitious group of younger followers, can scarcely revert to the role of a private MP. As [Lord] Stanley observed in 1849, “he must be a Leader, in spite of himself.”’4 Peel’s role and status as an influential, non-party or above-party statesman had both royal and popular support. When he had first become prime minister, Peel’s relations with Queen Victoria had been awkward but he had forged a close relationship with Prince Albert and the Queen herself



Peel to Rosebery 75

had grown to trust, admire and depend on him. The royal couple continued to see much of the former prime minister. Prince Albert regarded him as a friend, confidant and mentor, and frequently sought his advice on foreign affairs, sometimes showing Peel copies of diplomatic despatches and correspondence. At times the Prince wanted to discuss the domestic political scene but Peel, conscious of the constitutional proprieties, was careful and discreet. Foreign statesmen and diplomats stayed in touch with Peel and sought his views after 1846; he knew Guizot, the French prime minister, well, and after King Louis Philippe was forced into exile in 1848 entertained him at Drayton Manor and offered a secret personal loan.5 In the country he had a unique prestige and popularity, lauded as the champion of free trade and the people’s cheap bread. When he travelled and visited towns, making public appearances and speeches or attending public functions, there would be big and cheering crowds and fulsome reports in the press. On a visit to Darlington in 1847 the union jack was run up at the railway station, church bells rung and the local shops closed early in his honour. ‘Everybody’, it was said, ‘would be glad to see him in office again.’ ‘If the country could be polled’, Charles Greville commented, ‘he would be elected by an immense majority. There is a prevalent opinion that he must return to power; nobody knows when or how, but the notion is that … if a crisis of difficulty and danger arrive … Peel is the only man capable of extricating the country from it.’6 But Peel’s stance was much less popular in parliament and with his fellow-politicians. As Anna Ramsay put it, it was ‘impossible that anyone but himself should accept Peel’s abdication’. Dependent on his predecessor’s support and assistance Lord John Russell could not believe Peel was serious about not wanting to take office again and feared a come-back. That could not be at the head of a Conservative government, however, for Peel showed no interest in reuniting or rebuilding the party – the policy and personal rift between him and the protectionists was too deep. Such had been the ferocity of his attacks on Peel’s character and honour that at one point Peel had had to be talked out of challenging their leader, Lord George Bentinck, to a duel. The protectionist backbenchers regarded Peel as a traitor and were good haters; two years after the break-up they burst out hooting and bellowing in a hooligan effort to stop Peel being heard in a debate on the Navigation Laws.7 However, Gladstone and some other Peel supporters still saw themselves as Conservatives and wanted to see the party reconstructed and back together, and on the other side Lord Stanley (the future Earl of Derby), who had resigned from Peel’s Cabinet over Corn Law repeal, sought to repair the schism. He was conscious that most of the real talent and brains in the Conservative Party had gone with Peel. But it was to no avail – Peel had rebuilt the Tory party after 1830 but was now through with it. It would be almost 30 years before there was another Conservative government with a parliamentary majority behind it.



76 After Number 10

Peel did not think much of Russell’s abilities as prime minister or his handling of problems like the famine in Ireland. But he believed it was vital to swing his support behind the Whig government to preserve and defend his own policy achievements and legacy, and in particular to prevent the possibility of a return to protectionism. Though he made gains in the 1847 general election Russell lacked a clear and stable parliamentary majority and without the Conservative split and the existence of the 90–100 strong Peelite group of MPs his weak Whig government might not have lasted long. On one issue or occasion after another in these years, Peel was an indispensable prop to the Whig government. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Wood, repeatedly sought his advice and cooperation: on budget measures, taxation and the public finances; and on the handling of the great commercial and banking crisis of 1847. Behind the scenes Peel was shown official papers, gave freely of his experience and expertise, and even redrafted letters from the Chancellor to the Bank of England. In the Commons he made effective speeches defending free trade, supporting the government’s measures and actions, and coming to their rescue in key votes. After Peel wiped the floor with the Tory opponents of repeal of the Navigation Laws in one debate, the hapless prime minister had to confess he had been left with nothing to say when winding-up. In the winter of 1849–50 when there were rumours the government might reintroduce a small duty on foreign corn, Peel made his concerns known and ministers were quick to reassure him they were steadfast against a return to protectionism. On Ireland Peel thought the famine provided an opportunity for a fresh start and major initiatives. He showed great imagination and foresight in identifying land reform, and the breakup, improvement and efficient development of the great estates, as key steps. But he was ahead of his time and was frustrated at the government’s inaction and drift, though the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Clarendon, was sympathetic, consulted with Peel, and introduced some minor measures with his support.8 The problem was, as Gash put it, that in keeping Russell’s weak and struggling government in office, Peel was losing his freedom of action and becoming a captive of Whig policy. This strategy increasingly frustrated Peel’s supporters and acolytes. As long as he played the role he did, Gash argues, ‘Peel made it difficult for anything like a proper two-party system to re-emerge’, and strong government would be almost impossible. Indeed some Peelites wanted to redraw the political battle-lines and ‘looked forward to a coalition of moderates in which their reluctant leader would be forced by circumstances to play the central role’. By 1850 the number of Peelite MPs willing regularly to vote with Peel in support of the Whigs had fallen to around 45, though one insider perhaps over-estimated that up to 160 MPs would rally to Peel personally. Splits in the Peelite ranks opened up: when Disraeli moved a motion on relief for agriculture in February



Peel to Rosebery 77

1850, 35 Peelites voted with the protectionists while 27 joined Peel in voting for the government, which narrowly won. Many wondered how much longer things could continue like this, and whether Peel might not be forced by events to take the initiative and give a stronger lead himself to avoid a protectionist come-back.9 Would Peel take office again was the question. In the spring of 1848, Russell’s political floundering on the budget, together with his poor health, had made him seem vulnerable. Some Whig ministers felt strongly that if Russell resigned then Peel’s return to government would be a national necessity – but he made it clear at that time that that was something he would not hear of. It is in the end impossible to know, argues Boyd Hilton, whether Peel ever seriously contemplated a come-back. Perhaps he left himself some wriggle room when, in May 1850, he insisted he would do ‘everything in my power’ to prevent the reversal of the free trade policy and the restoration of protectionism. In the same year, when his friend and supporter Edward Cardwell noted the general belief that he had resolved under no circumstances to resume office, Peel apparently insisted: ‘I never said so.’10 One of the things Peel and his supporters disliked about the Whig government was the style and content of Palmerston’s foreign policy, feeling particularly that his encouragement of democratic nationalism increased European tensions. Peel, however, had been reluctant to speak out publicly on foreign affairs and did not want to risk overthrowing the Whig government by gunning for its controversial Foreign Secretary. It was therefore with some relief that on 28 June 1850 in the famous Don Pacifico debate he had been able to speak and vote against Palmerston, while the government still won a comfortable majority. A few days later, only 62 and at the height of his powers, Peel was dead. Out riding, he was thrown by his horse, which then trampled him, causing severe internal injuries. He lingered in great pain for a few days, while a large crowd gathered anxiously outside his house, and died on 2 July 1850. His sudden and unexpected death had a massive public impact. He had a private funeral at Drayton in Staffordshire; on the day, in a display of national mourning, mills and factories stopped work, shops closed, and ships in the ports flew their flags at half-mast. Lord Campbell claimed ‘If Peel had lived on in the common routine of parliamentary warfare, and died of old age, he would have had no statues erected to his memory.’11 But statues of him were to be erected in towns the length and breadth of the country. The Queen offered to make his widow a Viscountess but was declined, Peel having left instructions that no member of his family should receive any title or public reward because of his services. Peel had inherited his baronetcy but had refused all other honours, turning down both the Order of the Garter and an earldom. As prime minister he had been unusually



78 After Number 10

stingy about bestowing honours, creating only five peerages between 1841 and 1846. ‘The distinction of being without an honour is becoming a rare and valuable one’, he remarked, ‘and should not become extinct.’12 There is a sense in which Peel had almost sought and welcomed martyrdom for his great cause in 1846. He wanted his motives and actions to be understood and, while not the man to write personal memoirs, he put together in the late 1840s detailed justificatory accounts, built from his correspondence and memoranda, of the two big controversial issues of his career, Catholic emancipation (in the 1820s) and Corn Law repeal, leaving instructions that they should be published after his death. They came out in 1856. Few former prime ministers have enjoyed the sort of national popularity and influence or been able to dominate politics in the way Peel did in the last four years of his life. In part the parliamentary arithmetic gave him great leverage but it was also the case that his return to government was widely seen by the public and by other politicians as, one way or another and sooner or later, almost inevitable. His continued presence in politics and the role he played both fed into and complicated the reorganisation of party politics and contributed to the parliamentary instability of the period. Peel’s legacy was as the progenitor of Gladstonian liberalism but the route there was not straightforward.13 Had Peel lived, the course of British politics in the 1850s would have been different. Had he returned to office, he would have been a stronger and more effective prime minister than Aberdeen was when a Peelite/Liberal coalition was formed in 1852. But what a political leader like Peel might have become or done, had he not been cut off in midstream, can only ever be supposition.

Lord Aberdeen (resigned 30 January 1855) Aberdeen paid the price for the muddle, incompetence and disasters of the Crimean War. His two-year premiership ended when he resigned on 30 January 1855 after losing a censure vote in parliament on a proposal to set up a committee of enquiry into the conduct of the war. It was an ignominious end, which overshadowed the achievements of his career before then, and from which his reputation never recovered. He later said he wished he had resigned before the war began (in March 1854) rather than letting himself be dragged into it. He was not cut out to be, nor in a situation which had allowed him to be, a strong prime minister. His premiership had a provisional stopgap aspect to it from the first, not least in his own eyes. He had headed from December 1852 a Peelite-Whig coalition government (his Peelite group having only 30 MPs compared with 270 Whigs/Radicals), and he aimed to stand aside at some point and make way for Lord John Russell. Aberdeen had apparently been preparing to ‘slip out of office’ as early as the autumn of 1853, but the right moment for the



Peel to Rosebery 79

handover never came.14 Russell had been prime minister before, resented being supplanted and was impatient for the succession. He was an awkward and disloyal prima donna throughout the life of the government, regularly bandying about resignation threats. He finally stabbed Aberdeen in the back by resigning a week before the crucial Commons vote that toppled the government. Aberdeen was 71 when he left Number 10; he never again held office but remained politically active for three or four more years. Queen Victoria was upset to lose him and thought he had been badly treated by his colleagues and by the public. Even before he had resigned she had decided to give the beleaguered Aberdeen the Order of the Garter to hold alongside his existing Order of the Thistle, which he had held since 1808 (Bute and Rosebery are the only other two prime ministers to have been given both honours). ‘These are empty honours’, Aberdeen believed, ‘but they are proofs of real regard.’ His relations with the Queen and the Court remained close. The Queen made a private visit to his house and estates in Scotland; she sought his advice and support on various constitutional questions (such as Albert’s assumption of the title of Prince Consort, and the protocols and the rights of the prime minister in relation to the prerogative of dissolution during Derby’s minority government in 1858); Prince Albert sought his views when the French went to war against the Austrians in Italy in 1859 (Aberdeen did not take a liberal line in support of Italian nationalism – a point of disagreement between him and Gladstone).15 Although Palmerston invited him, and the Queen was in favour, Aberdeen would not countenance joining the government of the man who replaced him. It would, he told a Peelite colleague urging this step in February 1855, ‘expose [him] to gratuitous indignity’ and he would not be ‘of the slightest use’ in the government. ‘To be stigmatised as the head, and tolerated as a subordinate member, I cannot endure’ – he would ‘rather die’. However, he was careful not to rule out some sort of eventual return to office. ‘If at any future time my presence should ever be required in a Cabinet, I should feel no objection to accept any office, or to enter it without an office. But to be the head of a Cabinet to-day, and become a subordinate member of the very same Cabinet to-morrow, would be a degradation to which I could never submit.’ However, he helped Palmerston form a government by putting much effort into overcoming the doubts of his Peelite colleagues who were unwilling to serve under the new PM, though several of them did not stay long and soon resigned. He was irritated when Palmerston ‘stole our thunder’ by ‘appropriating credit for measures resolved on in Cabinet’ before he had succeeded to the premiership. 16 The future looked rather bleak to Aberdeen in February 1855, as he admitted to his daughter-in-law: ‘I do not know how I shall bear being out of office. I have many resources and many objects of interest; but after being



80 After Number 10

occupied with great affairs, it is not easy to subside to the level of common occupation.’ Although a grandee, Aberdeen was not tremendously wealthy: his estates were huge (over 50,000 acres) but were poor-quality land, had been neglected and his income from them rarely exceeded £20,000; he felt the absence of his prime-ministerial salary. There had been great tragedy in his life before he became prime minister: both his wives and four daughters had died prematurely. Now his eldest son became seriously ill and for a while Aberdeen was worried he too would die. Aberdeen’s own health began to trouble him and, behind the equable and controlled public façade, there are signs he was disappointed and unhappy.17 For a while politics and public affairs continued to keep him busy. He acquitted himself well enough in front of the select committee investigating the mismanagement of the war, the new government ensured that a condemnatory Commons motion was defeated, and talk of impeaching Aberdeen and his ministers was quashed.18 He spoke frequently in the House of Lords during his retirement years, most often on rather technical and/or Scottish questions; his last speech, on the suppression of the slave trade, was made in July 1858. For some time after Aberdeen left office, Lord Clarendon, who had kept his job as Foreign Secretary in the new government, privately briefed him about Cabinet discussions and showed him the diplomatic despatches from the Continent. In return Aberdeen fed in his own detailed comments and advice on foreign policy. He played the elder statesman, seeing and being consulted by other ministers and politicians, and keeping in touch with foreign statesmen (like Guizot) too. He managed to listen politely and patiently when Lord John Russell – who had done so much to wreck his premiership – came to seek his advice and complain about his colleagues in the new government. Aberdeen’s feelings about Russell were by now ‘ambivalent’, as his biographer puts it, though his distrust of Palmerston’s foreign policy was so great he was prepared to let bygones be bygones and hoped Russell would one day become Liberal leader and prime minister again.19 By 1857 Aberdeen was willing to vote with Derby and the Conservatives over China to bring Palmerston down, though in the subsequent general election Palmerston bounced back and the Peelites lost many seats. For a brief moment in 1858, when politics were in flux again, with the fall of Palmerston’s government and Derby forming a minority government, there was talk that Aberdeen might come back as head of a coalition. There are claims he might not have been unwilling to resume the premiership, but it seems more likely, given his age and declining health and strength, that his preferred role would have been as kingmaker on the Liberal side. Probably the most important political role Aberdeen played in the years after 1855 was repeatedly to insist that the Peelites now had no role or future as an independent force and that the sooner it was accepted they ought to merge with the Liberal Party, the better. He made strenuous efforts to dissuade



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Gladstone – whom he saw as the great future hope of the Liberals – from rejoining the Conservative Party, something he came near to doing before eventually becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Liberal government formed by Palmerston in 1859. Gladstone would later describe his mentor Aberdeen as ‘the man in public life of all others whom I have loved’.20 ‘The People must have a victim’, Aberdeen had remarked when he was ousted in 1855. He understood he had been judged a ‘failure’ and hounded out of office because of the war. But he stuck to his view that the war may have been just but it was also unwise and unnecessary. He did not fear history’s eventual verdict and had kept all his papers, instructing his youngest son to publish them after his death. Unfortunately, to avoid indiscretions, he had also given Gladstone and another old political friend a power of veto over publication, and could not have anticipated the way in which Gladstone later unscrupulously blocked the project to suppress disclosures about his opposition to parliamentary reform in the 1850s which would have been politically embarrassing to him.21 The Crimean war certainly weighed on his mind, but as Muriel Chamberlain warns, Aberdeen’s sense of guilt or remorse about it should not be exaggerated. The strange story about him refusing to rebuild a church on his Scottish estates and then his relatives finding various scraps of paper on which he had scribbled a biblical text about God commanding King David not to build a temple ‘because thou hast shed much blood’, comes from the end period of Aberdeen’s life when he seems to have suffered some sort of breakdown and was in a state of ‘senile depression’ and confusion.22 His health had been failing for two or three years before he died in London on 14 December 1860, aged 76.

Lord Palmerston (died in office 18 October 1865) Palmerston was the last prime minister to die in office, passing away two days short of his 81st birthday on 18 October 1865 at Brocket Hall, his wife’s country house in Hertfordshire. He had spent 58 years as an MP (his peerage being an Irish one) and a record total of 48 years as a minister, including being Foreign Secretary for 16 years and prime minister for over nine years (1855–58 and 1859–65). He was the oldest person ever to become prime minister for the first time when he became PM in 1855 aged a few months over 71 (18 of our prime ministers had died before reaching the age he was then). He was 75 when he started his second term. Only a man of Palmerston’s amazing zest, vitality and resilience could have kept going in active politics for so long. Some had written him off politically when he was defeated in 1858 but he came back. In the 1860s he was clearly ageing and his health was starting to fail, with absences because of illness, gout, frequent colds, kidney problems and bladder trouble, deaf-



82 After Number 10

ness, forgetfulness, and times when he fell asleep on the frontbench in parliament and during Cabinet meetings.23 But he remained popular in the country, winning re-election with an increased majority in July 1865. And to the end he remained forceful and in control of his government. Supporters and opponents alike knew that as long as he was prime minister there would be no further instalment of parliamentary reform – it came two years after he died. ‘There is no evidence that Palmerston was about to leave office [in 1865] and much less quit politics’, says Ziegler. ‘It never occurred to Palmerston to resign’, according to Southgate.24 He was planning for the new session and working on papers and administrative issues right up to his death. There is a popular story that he died in the act of seducing a maid on his billiard table.25 He was a notorious womaniser and had been cited in a divorce case – which eventually collapsed – in 1863, when he was aged 79. But the truth is more prosaic: he caught a severe chill while out driving in his carriage, which turned into a fever and complications set in. He was still capable of eating mutton chops and drinking port for breakfast in his final illness, and an open dispatch box was by his side when he died. One suspects that, having spent his entire adult life in politics, this end was the sort he would have wanted: he did not want to be a ‘former prime minister’.

Lord John Russell (resigned 26 June 1866) Russell was a front-rank player in 19th century politics for nearly 40 years, a leading reformer who had a big role in pushing through the 1832 Great Reform Act and a central figure in the development of liberalism and the Victorian Liberal Party. His two terms as prime minister were not particularly successful, and his career had an unusual shape. Thirteen years separated his two stints in Number 10 (1846–52 and 1865–66), during which time he held ministerial office for nearly nine years under two other prime ministers, lost the leadership of his party, twice resigned office, made no progress with his reformist agenda, and saw his reputation reach its nadir. When he made it back into the premiership, he lasted only eight months before having to resign after being defeated when rebels on his own side combined with the Tories to destroy his reform bill. Nearly 74 he finally left office on 26 June 1866, living as a retired elder statesman until his death in 1878. Writing his memoirs as an old man, Russell admitted to having made many ‘errors’ and even ‘very gross blunders’.26 Problems of character and temperament, as well as tactical mistakes, contributed to the rough political ride he had in the 1850s and in his later career generally. Shy, proud and insecure, elitist, cold, untactful, restless and impulsive, and a moralistic ‘conviction politician’, Russell was a difficult leader and a still more



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difficult follower. He often seemed not to realise in the 1850s how unpopular he had become and why other politicians would not at any price serve under him. Ambitious to return to Number 10, Russell often played his cards badly, particularly in the Aberdeen coalition 1852–55. He seemed aloof and cocooned in his uncritical family circle, too much influenced by his ‘protective, unworldly and cloyingly religious’ second wife, who probably exacerbated rather than helped to smooth over his political and personal differences with colleagues (who unkindly nicknamed her ‘deadly nightshade’), supporters and the Queen.27 Changes, realignments and instability in party politics and the party system in this period shaped and constrained his opportunities and frustrated his ambitions. With the Liberals (themselves internally divided) unable to win a majority on their own, and the Conservatives split, the Peelites’ position was critical. Russell lost out on the one side because the Peelites disliked his radical reformism and preferred more centrist leadership. On the other side he was overtaken as Liberal leader by his rival Palmerston, with whom he had fallen out as Foreign Secretary and who had engineered the fall of his government in 1852 after Russell had dismissed him, and who courted the press more successfully and stood for a tough and populist foreign policy and a more pragmatic, cautious and consensual approach at home.28 When he lost office in 1852 Russell was nearly 60: he was someone whose health was always delicate, but he had a large ‘hinterland’ and enjoyed a happy family life. If he had retired then he might have been able to play a constructive elder statesmen role and done more for his reputation with his political contemporaries and historically. But he did not want to hand the party over to Palmerston, ‘believed he had a divine right to go on leading’, remained strongly committed to the cause of further parliamentary reform, and believed he would be a better prime minister than anyone else.29 The next few years were a mix of the frustrating and the disastrous for him. He was briefly Foreign Secretary, then Minister without Portfolio, and then Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons in Lord Aberdeen’s coalition (1852–55), resentful at being ousted and believing there was an agreement that Aberdeen would shortly make way for him to return to his rightful position as prime minister, and an unsettled and unsettling presence in the Cabinet. His petulant conduct during the government and then the way in which his resignation brought about its overthrow made him seem, to everyone but himself, treacherous and disloyal. In the aftermath the Queen did at one stage ask him to see if he could form a government but he immediately met with point-blank refusals to serve under him from his former colleagues. Under Palmerston, he was briefly Colonial Secretary (February–July 1855) but was forced out after an outcry over his role in failed talks at Vienna on a way out of the



84 After Number 10

Crimean War at which he had represented the British government. Palmerston (who had thought that if Russell came back from the talks with a success ‘he would be more inconvenient to the government than he would otherwise be’, and who wanted to see him packed off to the Lords)30 did not fight hard to resist the storm and keep him in the government. Russell was left isolated, depressed, on the verge of a breakdown and fighting for his political life. For a while he went abroad and devoted himself to editing the correspondence and starting work on the life of his great Whig hero, Charles James Fox. He was out of office for four years, slowly rebuilding his position. He underlined his reputation as a reformer and was active in making public appearances and trying to rally opinion and win support for proposals for educational, social and legal reform, helped by and exploiting the Palmerston government’s inactivity on these fronts. Despite his tit-for-tat role in 1857 and again in 1858 in helping to defeat and overthrow Palmerston, Queen Victoria’s ‘two terrible old men’ managed to make their peace and sink their differences to oust Derby’s minority Conservative government in 1859. Each now agreed to serve under the other, but not under a third person, and the Queen opted for Palmerston. It is possible Russell might have become prime minister if parliamentary reform rather than foreign affairs had dominated the political agenda at that point. Russell became Foreign Secretary and served in that role for six years (1859–65). The Home Office might have been a better post for him, allowing him to display his reforming instincts. But Russell had wanted the Foreign Office and it suited Palmerston – more experienced in foreign policy – to have him corralled there under his watchful eye. Russell’s judgment could be poor but his ‘views on foreign affairs were little more than an echo of Palmerston’s’, says Norman Gash, and he ‘was happy in the illusion of power and activity.’31 He was 67 in 1859 and probably did not expect or hope that a prime minister eight years older than him would last as long in Downing Street as he did. The failure of another parliamentary reform bill in 1860 disappointed him and, with his own energies flagging, conscious of Palmerston’s continuing vigour and that Gladstone was emerging as the leader of the next generation of Liberals, he decided to go to the Lords, becoming Earl Russell in 1861. Russell was 73 when Palmerston’s death finally put him back in Number 10 in 1865. But his tenure was brief. The old-parliamentary-reformer-in-ahurry had no chance to end his career on a high note, faced as he was with a divided Cabinet and party, and blocked and defeated by an alliance between right-wing, anti-reform Liberals and the Conservatives, resigning in June 1866 after losing a key vote in parliament on an amendment to his reform bill. Not until Gladstone formed his first government, in December 1868, was it clear that Russell was out for good and would not hold ministerial office



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again. Over those 18 months, as his latest biographer says, while politically active in the Lords attacking the Conservative government’s policies, ‘increasingly, Russell seemed to defer to Gladstone’s leadership, although he was not yet ready to retire completely’. They worked together to oppose, unsuccessfully, Derby’s reform bill, which extended the franchise further than the Liberals liked. Russell was no radical democrat and sounded off to Bright about giving the vote to ‘many of the most unfit class; men dependent on their landlords and employers, or open to the temptation of bribes and beer’. Looking ahead, he tried in 1867–68 to set out an agenda for the next Liberal government, publishing pamphlets proposing Irish church reform and introducing resolutions in the House of Lords calling for a minister of education and improved education for the working classes. Gladstone thought his initiative was premature but now masses of working men had the vote, Russell argued, it was ‘the question of the day’ and his efforts helped strengthen the hand of those in the party pushing for educational reform, something which culminated in the 1870 Education Act. In December 1867 he wrote to Gladstone saying he had pretty well made up his mind not to take office again – and the younger man did not demur – but there were rumours a few months later that he wanted to be Foreign Secretary again if the Liberals got back in. He took no part in the 1868 election which saw Gladstone swept into Number 10. Knowing how troublesome the independent-minded Russell could be, Gladstone thought it might be safer to have him on the inside and offered a seat in the Cabinet without portfolio. Russell declined but later complained that had he been offered a post such as Lord President of the Council or Lord Privy Seal he might have accepted – which was rather hair-splitting and inconsistent.32 ‘Russell had never understood restraints’, wrote John Prest, ‘and it was now too late to learn.’ Some government policies he supported: the Education Act, the Irish Land Act. He introduced a proposal for life peers that Gladstone backed. But he was often unhelpful and a nuisance, criticising the government or quibbling over the details of its measures in the Lords or the press. He opposed the introduction of the secret ballot in elections, and though he favoured the abolition of the purchase of commissions in the army he opposed the way in which the government went about it – by royal warrant rather than by legislation. He was often critical of Gladstone’s foreign policy, venting his dislike of his successor’s attitude towards the colonies, the empire and the armed forces in his memoirs. He tried to raise a motion of censure over the actions of the government in settling the Alabama case with arbitration and compensation to the USA (he was personally involved, having failed as Foreign Secretary to prevent the Confederate warship, built in Liverpool, from putting out to sea). In 1872 he floated a proposal for Irish and Scottish provincial assemblies (four for Ireland, two for Scotland) to deal with the ‘local wants’ of those areas but was strongly opposed to Home Rule for Ireland.33



86 After Number 10

Gladstone handled the erratic and crotchety ex-PM as tactfully as he could, writing to keep him in touch, giving Russell credit for his achievements and arguing he was building on them, and claiming he looked upon him as his ‘oracle and master’ on constitutional questions. Gladstone saw that Russell was declining – ‘the victim of infirmities’ – and resolved it would be best to give him only ever ‘a soft answer’. He made the gesture of offering a peerage to Russell’s son, Amberley, who was unable to find a seat in the Commons. But he complained to Lord Granville about Russell’s ‘petulant acts’ and about him ‘leading the mad’.34 Russell had always loved travel, and France and Italy in particular, but after 1873 he never went abroad again. Now in his eighties he was increasingly feeble, living mainly at Pembroke Lodge, the house in Richmond Park which the Queen had given the Russells in the 1840s for their lifetime use. As a younger son Russell was for most of his life at the financially hardpressed end of the upper classes, admitting at one point that he had never been in debt before becoming prime minister, feeling the loss of a ministerial salary, dependent on an annuity from his brother (the Duke of Bedford), and unable to afford a country house of his own befitting his prime-ministerial status, though his position had been helped by inheriting an estate in Ireland (in 1861). His grandson, the philosopher Bertrand Russell, recalled him as an old man: warm, kindly and affectionate in his family circle, being wheeled around his overgrown garden in a bath chair and sitting in his room reading Hansard.35 For a practicising politician Russell wrote much over his lifetime – histories, biographies, and constitutional studies and, as a young man, a novel and a play. He was well-acquainted with many notable writers. For some years after his retirement from office, he still attracted distinguished political and literary figures, and eminent foreign visitors to Pembroke Lodge, but withdrew more and more from society with extreme old age. His memoirs, published in 1875, described as ‘disappointing’ and ‘sour’ by one biographer, were written after his memory had begun to fail.36 Family tragedies clouded Russell’s last years with the serious illnesses of two of his sons, the death (in 1874) of his daughter-in-law Kate Amberley and her daughter, and then the death (in 1876) of his eldest son and heir Lord Amberley. Russell himself caught a fever and fell ill in 1878. Gladstone visited the fast-declining 85-year old, finding him a ‘noble wreck’. He died on 28 May 1878. His family declined a Westminster Abbey funeral and he was buried in the Russell family vault at Chenies in Buckinghamshire.

Lord Derby (resigned 25 February 1868) Derby was the first person to become prime minister three times but served in that office for less than four years in total (February–December 1852; February 1858–June 1859; June 1866–February 1868) and never headed a



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government with a parliamentary majority. He is the longest-serving party leader in modern British politics, sitting atop the Conservative Party for 22 years until he retired. Almost uniquely he faced no serious rival or challenge in that time, standing down only because serious ill-health made it impossible for him to continue. He lived for only 20 months after finally leaving office on 25 February 1868. For all his well-known passion for the turf (though he had sold most of his stud and formally retired from horse-racing in 1863) and for field sports, his scholarly erudition (he published well-received translations of classical poetry and of Homer’s Iliad in the 1860s before becoming PM for the third time), and the long periods of time he spent away from London at his vast estates at Knowsley in Lancashire, Derby was no aristocratic dilettante but a serious, determined and ambitious politician. He was immensely rich, with an annual income estimated at between £60,000 and £110,000 (equivalent to £4–6 million today); of all the prime ministers, only Rosebery, it is claimed, enjoyed a larger personal income. (That said, Derby, like his father, left a huge estate debt of over half a million pounds.)37 Disraeli called Derby the ‘invalid chief’ because of his chronic and disabling ill-health, severe and painful attacks of gout, plus other illnesses and complications, frequently knocking him out of action for weeks and months at a time. There is a story that a wine merchant tried to sell him his sherry as a cure for gout, Derby retorting: ‘I have tried your sherry and prefer the gout.’ But there does seem to have been a cyclical pattern of sickness and bouts of deep depression, joined to a long-term decline in his health. As an opposition leader, Derby was often pretty detached and inactive. The stresses of his third premiership (he was 67 when it started), and particularly the intense struggle to pass the Second Reform Act (doubling the size of the electorate), seem to have finally shattered his health and powers of recovery. There had been speculation about his retirement some years before but Derby had kept going for two reasons: first, to try to win a Tory majority again (which he never did) and second because of uncertainties over the succession. He had made his son, Lord Stanley, Foreign Secretary in his final government but he (and the party rank and file) had doubts about his politics (later, as the 15th Earl of Derby, he switched to the Liberals and served in Gladstone’s Cabinet). Disraeli was the leading Tory in the Commons but also had plenty of detractors, though his close cooperation and support made it possible for Derby to remain leader long after his declining health would otherwise have forced him out. By late 1867, says Hawkins, Derby was a ‘fading presence’, often unable to attend Cabinet meetings, and Disraeli was effectively in charge of the government. Derby’s doctors had been able to patch him up for particular occasions but were fighting a losing battle; the ailing PM was now bedridden and sedated with



88 After Number 10

laudanum/opium for long periods. Although the Queen wanted him to continue, Derby insisted that leaving office had become literally ‘a matter of life and death’ for him.38 There was some last-minute awkwardness because Derby, who had written to the Queen of his intention to resign, wanted to wait until he was well enough to hand over the seals of office formally in person, and he pressed for a handful of peerages for particular supporters and allies. She had refused a similar request for peerages from Russell in 1866, but this time reluctantly agreed, and Derby wrote to submit his resignation. He recommended Disraeli as his successor but – though the outgoing PM did not know it – the Queen had discreetly sounded Disraeli out a few weeks earlier and had made it clear he would be chosen. The Queen expressed the hope to Derby that he would remain in the Cabinet without office, but he replied his health would not permit it though he would use his influence to strengthen the government.39 Derby already had an ancient title (he was the 14th Earl) and he had been made a Knight of the Garter in 1859 after his second premiership; to mark his final retirement he was made a KCMG (the Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George). Derby had left reluctantly and only because he could not physically continue any longer. Jones put it neatly: ‘after enjoying great prominence, [Derby] saw in retirement that he would be like some of his old thoroughbreds, with their exciting days behind them, turned out to pasture’. Disraeli handled his old chief with care and tact. He wrote saying he would ‘always consider myself only your deputy’ and that the ex-prime minister’s wishes would be treated as commands. Derby had to pooh-pooh this sort of language and said while he would, if asked, always give his frank opinion, he would not expect it should always be adopted and would not be affronted if the new prime minister did not act on it. Their relations in the past had sometimes been difficult and strained but now their positions were reversed, things worked well and they dealt with each other in, says Jones, a ‘cordial’ and ‘diplomatic’ way. Lord Stanley remained as Foreign Secretary, and Derby managed to secure from Disraeli a junior ministerial post to launch his younger son, Freddy Stanley’s, political career. For the rest of his premiership Disraeli, says Blake, ‘consulted Derby on most major issues and on the principal lay and clerical appointments’. He was consulted on parliamentary tactics. ‘Derby never hesitated to give advice and never took umbrage if it was not accepted.’ Derby became, it was said at the time, the government’s ‘Guardian Angel’. His presence ‘over Disraeli’s shoulder’ (as Hawkins puts it) and his great prestige were useful assets to the new PM. Derby’s departure was widely regretted in the Tory party and there was no great enthusiasm for Disraeli who was in a weak political position: effectively a caretaker prime minister, in a minority in parliament, and able to do little more than mark time until a general election.40 Disraeli lasted only nine months in Number 10 after he took over, going on to lose the



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November 1868 election. Against the tide the Tories performed better than expected and gained seats in Derby’s stronghold of Lancashire, where he had focused his family influence and financial resources.41 For a while Derby was active in the House of Lords where he acted as the unofficial leader of the Conservative peers. His last political battle in 1868–69 was fought in defence of the protestant Church of Ireland, with which he had been associated back in the early days of his career in the 1820s and ’30s. Gladstone had seized on the Irish Church issue to galvanise and unite the Liberals and disrupt the Conservatives. After Disraeli’s government was defeated in parliamentary votes on resolutions calling for the Irish church’s disestablishment in April 1868, Derby – at the Queen’s behest – urged him not to resign immediately, and the Conservatives hung on a little longer before calling an election.42 Derby spoke out vehemently against the Gladstone government’s Irish Church bill in 1869, seeing disestablishment and disendowment as the thin end of the wedge that would ultimately threaten the Union and lead to attacks on the position of the English Church. He struggled against crippling illness to attend and speak in the Lords where, feeble and pale, it was obvious his energy and powers as a debater had gone for good – he was ‘an old toothless lion’, remarked one observer after his last speech there in June 1869. Derby was intransigently prepared to fight to the bitter end and hoped that Conservative peers would throw the bill out, provoking a clash between the two Houses, though Disraeli and the Queen sought to defuse the crisis. In the end cross-party negotiations secured a compromise, and the measure passed through the Lords with the help of some Conservatives voting with the government and others abstaining. Derby was among 143 Tory peers voting against. He attended the Lords for the last time on 22 July, remarking that now ‘I have nothing left but to go away’.43 Three months later Derby was dead. In September 1869 he spoke gloomily to his son about the political future, predicting Ireland would break-away from the United Kingdom, and that the House of Lords would come under attack and possibly the monarchy too. His health collapsed again. His death, at age 70 on 23 October 1869, was perhaps hastened by the shock of the excessive dose of opium administered by his doctor to relieve his pain. Asked how he was feeling during his final illness, as he lapsed in and out of consciousness, he is supposed to have replied ‘bored to the utmost power of extinction’.44

Benjamin Disraeli (resigned 21 April 1880) After Disraeli’s farewell audience with Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle, following his resignation in April 1880, he took away as her parting gifts to him a curious set of knick-knacks: statuettes of the Queen, her favourite ghillie John Brown, her pony and her dog. He said he was delighted with



90 After Number 10

them. Though he put a brave face on it, he was bitter about his eviction from office and the ‘crushing and unexpected disaster’ of his general election defeat.45 The Conservatives had crashed to defeat, their majority of around 100 seats over the Liberals in the 1874 election being more or less reversed. Disraeli was old (75), ill and weary. But he was not yet ready to retire from the political fray. No one thought at the time this resignation was the end of the road for the brilliant political adventurer, or anticipated his death exactly a year later. Disraeli was prime minister for only about half as long as his great rival Gladstone, occupying Number 10 twice (February–December 1868, and February 1874–April 1880) for a total of six years and 11 months. In the last couple of years of his main premiership he was ‘master of his party, even a venerated figure’, but his position earlier had often been more precarious. It had been thought he would retire with Derby; after 1868 ‘he was tolerated, rather as Palmerston had been, because he was not expected to last long’; there had been party discontent and talk of removing him in 1872; after 1874 he had often seemed too ill to go on; in 1876 he had decided he could continue as prime minister only if he went to the Lords (which he did as Earl of Beaconsfield).46 He had set a precedent in 1868 by resigning after his general election defeat rather than waiting to be defeated in a Commons vote in the new parliament. Gladstone had done the same in 1874 and Disraeli followed suit in 1880. In 1868 the Queen had offered him a peerage which he had declined, and had instead requested one for his wife, the odd and endearing Mary Anne Disraeli, who had become Viscountess Beaconsfield in her own right. In 1880 in the couple of weeks after the election results were known and before he formally resigned (on 21 April) he had had to deal with those he called ‘pesterers of the 11th hour’ – applicants for honours, rewards and appointments. ‘Winding up a government [is] as hard work as forming one, without any of its excitement’, he protested. ‘It is the last and least glorious exercise of power, and will be followed, [which] is the only compensation, by utter neglect and isolation.’ Disraeli wanted nothing for himself, having received the Order of the Garter and turning down the Queen’s offer of a dukedom in 1878. He secured a peerage for his private secretary, Monty Cory, which was then unique and prompted Gladstone to mutter about ‘Caligula’s horse…’.47 Queen Victoria was desolate at the loss of Disraeli as her prime minister. She was ‘shocked and ashamed at what has happened’, she told him: what the electorate had done was ‘disgraceful’. The prospect of the return of the ‘half-mad firebrand’ Gladstone was, to her, frightful. The advice Disraeli had given her, after it was clear the Liberals had won, to send initially for Hartington and not the G.O.M., was constitutionally correct as Hartington was formally the Liberal leader in the Commons, but it only put off the evil day for a short while. Disraeli had sometimes found ‘the Faery’, as he



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would privately refer to her, demanding and even on occasion ‘very mad’, but had grown genuinely fond of her. After his departure from office he stayed at Windsor three times in the remaining eight months of 1880. They kept up a private correspondence, mostly but not entirely gossipy. Disraeli was a master at providing the mix of sympathy, affection and flattery she needed. But there was some political content to their secret exchanges, with the Queen telling him about audiences with Liberal politicians and asking for his advice and for his views on foreign policy. This behaviour might have become constitutionally more problematic had Disraeli not been prudent and discreet, and if the situation had lasted longer than it did. In the end, as Blake says, it probably did no great harm: ‘nothing that Disraeli could say was likely to make the Queen detest Gladstone any more than she already did’.48 After finally quitting Downing Street, Disraeli no longer had a house in London. One of the Rothschilds made available a suite of rooms in his house for Disraeli’s use on his occasional visits to London for House of Lords business, but he spent most of his time at Hughenden, his country house. At the end of the year he took out a seven-year lease on a house in Mayfair – a sign he was intending to remain politically active. He enjoyed the fine summer and autumn in the Buckinghamshire countryside, saying he wanted ‘a dose of solitude’ and describing himself as a ‘hermit’ and ‘in a state of coma’.49 His wife had died in 1872 and afterwards he had proposed marriage to the widowed Lady Chesterfield largely – as they both understood – to be nearer to her younger and happily-married sister, Lady Bradford, with whom he was in love. Lady Chesterfield had turned him down, but for many years – and continuing after his loss of office – the two women were a vital source of female comfort and sympathy for him, and he saw much of them and corresponded constantly. When he had lost the premiership for the first time Disraeli had caused a sensation by publishing a best-seller, Lothair, in 1870, the first novel ever written by a British ex-prime minister. According to Monypenny and Buckle this book ‘deepened doubts of statesmen about Disraeli’s seriousness. Politicians out of office, it was thought then, should write classical, historical, or constitutional studies.’ In 1880 he pulled off a similar success with Endymion, a novel he had started in opposition before 1874 and finished soon after his final election defeat (it appeared in November 1880). He received for it the-then record publisher’s advance of £10,000. ‘My books’, Disraeli once said, ‘are the history of my life’. Though he never wrote his memoirs, his novels (he wrote 12 over his lifetime) all have strong autobiographical aspects. Endymion is a light and entertaining social and political fairy tale, with some good one-liners and characters loosely modelled on some of the great politicians and statesmen from Disraeli’s past. The Archbishop of Canterbury finished the novel ‘with a painful feeling that the author considers all political life as mere play and gambling’.



92 After Number 10

But Lord Derby thought it was ‘a remarkable production for a man of 75, after six years of a kind of labour which does not stimulate the imaginative faculty’. Disraeli then promptly sat down to start another novel, completing nine chapters before his death. Gladstone had thought an earlier novel of Disraeli’s to be ‘trash’ and he would have been even less amused had he seen the devastating caricature portrait of him, in the guise of the character called Falconet, in this new work: a humourless, arrogant, devout, self-righteous, hypocritical, prig.50 Disraeli had become obsessed with the real-life Gladstone – one of the things still keeping him in politics was the sight of the ‘Arch Villain’, as he now called him, back in Number 10, ‘an irresponsible demagogue’ leading a government of ‘Radicals and Jacobins’. There was no question of Disraeli giving up the party leadership, though the next election could be six years off, and on age and health grounds he seemed hardly up to another premiership. His position remained, as Blake put it, ‘impregnable’ until his death. There was no single obvious successor and Disraeli mischievously encouraged the two rivals, stroking Sir Stafford Northcote with talk about ‘when you come to form a ministry’ and telling Lord Salisbury, whom he probably preferred, how he dreamt of him ‘leading H.M.’s Opposition’. Formally these two shared the leadership after Disraeli’s death, with Salisbury eventually coming out on top and becoming the next Tory PM in 1885. Northcote’s rather lacklustre leadership of the Tory MPs in the Commons was not helped by the ‘Fourth Party’, Lord Randolph Churchill’s small awkward squad of rebels and gadflies. Disraeli wanted it both ways, seeing them as a ‘safety valve’ and encouraging them – ‘I wholly sympathize with you because I was never respectable myself’ – but also stressing the need for unity and support for the leadership.51 In this phase of his career Disraeli was gloomy, even at times alarmist, about the political outlook but believed the Conservatives needed to act cautiously. The Gladstonian bandwagon, he believed, threatened the landed interest, the constitution, the empire, the union with Ireland: ‘Old England seems to be tumbling to pieces’. There was not much the opposition could do when a new government was fresh in office. Taking advantage of the support of dissident Whigs, he had the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, which would have hit Irish landlords, thrown out by the House of Lords in August 1880. He felt it was prudent, however, to restrain the ultras on his own side and let through a Game Bill and an Employers Liability Bill – both popular in the country though detested by the Tories – rather than provoke an all-out war between the Commons and the Torydominated Lords. For the longer-term he hoped for and predicted some sort of internal ‘disruption’ breaking up the Liberal majority. But he was not the man to work out a more positive strategy for his party to reflect the rising new middle-class urban and suburban Conservatism that he neither understood nor identified with.52



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Disraeli’s health had been poor for many years. He suffered from gout, asthma, bronchitis and probably Bright’s disease. The warm weather towards the end of 1880 had done him good but the atrocious wintery conditions from January 1881 onwards brought about a rapid and sharp deterioration in his condition. He was still politically busy, but needed the help of drugs before speaking in the House of Lords in March 1881. He remained active on the social scene, at some times managing to seem his old self, but at other times sitting ‘silent and deathlike, a mummy at the feast’. He caught a bad chill in March and his powers of resistance failed. Bedridden and conscious this was the end, he corrected Hansard proofs of his last speech – ‘I will not go down to posterity talking bad grammar’ – and declined a proposed visit by the Queen – ‘No, she would only ask me to take a message to Albert.’53 He died, aged 76, on 19 April 1881. Gladstone offered a public funeral but his instructions were that he be buried alongside his wife at Hughenden. ‘There is some mystery’, says John Vincent, ‘as to how he died a rich man.’ His will was finally proved at £84,000 (equivalent to around £5 million today). For long periods of his life he had been heavily debtridden. He had married his wife for her money and had been helped to buy Hughenden with the sort of shady ‘loan’ from political ‘friends’ that would have put him into hot water in the modern world. Later a benefactor bought up his debts and then charged him a low rate of interest, declining the offer of a peerage in return. After being Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1850s, he secured a ministerial pension of £2,000 a year whenever he was out of office. He received a large legacy from a rich old lady he had been cultivating. He made serious money from his books as an ex-prime minister. There were rumours the Rothschilds may have been secret benefactors.54 But, as with so much else about Disraeli, there remains a shadowiness and an elusiveness.

William Gladstone (resigned 2 March 1894) Gladstone was Liberal prime minister four times for a total of over 12 years (1868–74, 1880–85, February–July 1886, 1892–94). He was an octogenarian during his last premiership: the oldest man ever to be appointed prime minister at 82 (fully 37 of our prime ministers had died before reaching the age he then was in August 1892); and 84 years old when he finally stood down on 2 March 1894. He always felt Wellington and Palmerston had made the mistake of clinging to office for too long, and he ultimately did so as well. Most of his colleagues in the end were glad to see the back of him. Gladstone’s political career stretched back to 1832, when he had first become an MP. On many occasions – and even before he became prime minister – he had talked of resignation and quitting politics, longing, so he



94 After Number 10

said, ‘for an interval of quiet between Parliament and the grave’ and to devote the remainder of his life to religious study and the defence of the church. Temperamentally, however, he could never give up politics and public life for long. After his 1874 defeat, careless of the consequences for his party, he had withdrawn from the leadership and for a while disengaged from politics, writing pamphlets and engaging in religious controversies, before bouncing back into the frontline with furious attacks on Turkish massacres of Christians in the Balkans and on the evils of Disraeli and his government. In his 1880–85 government, now in his seventies, his health was poor (only Campbell-Bannerman, Bonar Law and Churchill in the 1950s, among subsequent PMs, having worse health, suggests Jenkins) and sometimes looked like forcing his retirement, but he kept going.55 In the last decade of his political life he was spurred on by his crusade to solve the Irish problem. Defeat in that quest in 1893 heralded the end of his active career. Exceptional physical and mental strength and stamina, ambition and drive had powered Gladstone to the top and kept him there. He could display an ‘almost manic energy’ and remained tough, vigorous and resilient into old age, still wielding his axe and chopping down trees until he was nearly 82, and he stayed intellectually active, writing prolifically and reading voraciously. Where Disraeli wrote light fiction, Gladstone churned out theology and classical scholarship. His voluminous writings trying to link the stories of Homer to Christianity and the Bible were dismissed by Jowett as ‘crazy’; ‘everything Gladstone had written on Homer was wrong’, Disraeli liked to gloat. Asquith’s verdict on Gladstone’s output was ‘he is difficult to read, and still more difficult to remember’.56 By 1892 serious questions were being asked about Gladstone’s capacity for governing. Some senior Liberals wondered if the premiership could be handed to someone else, such as Earl Spencer, with Gladstone taking office without portfolio to introduce an Irish Home Rule bill – an arrangement that was never on the cards. ‘He had made the party unleadable during his active lifetime save by himself’, argues Matthews. Even his frustrated colleagues would not have dreamed up as a solution to their problem the bizarre incident in which the Grand Old Man, just after he had become prime minister again, was knocked down by a mad cow but luckily escaped serious injury or worse. Increasing deafness and eye problems affected his ability to function: he saw the world ‘through a fog’, reading was difficult and he found over half of what was said in the Commons inaudible. Gladstone himself wondered if he was ‘no longer fit for public life’, but his doctor believed he was ‘constitutionally unfit to stand aside’. Gladstone’s wife, Catherine, never wanted him to quit, Rosebery complaining that ‘the “petticoats” around him won’t allow him to give up power’. Although his physical powers were failing he could still rise to the big occasion, and his old mastery was seen in his leadership in devising and presenting the



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Home Rule legislation. But he was no longer up to what Jenkins calls ‘the normal conduct of a prime minister’s business’.57 The House of Lords destroyed Home Rule and Gladstone’s reason for staying in politics in September 1893 but he did not go easily or quietly: ‘he would go when he wanted to, not when his colleagues wanted him to’, and he was unhappy about retiring ‘on a low note of failure and defeat’. The final straw came when he was isolated and at odds with his Cabinet in heated and bitter arguments in early 1894 about increased naval expenditure. Gladstone raved on about the ‘mad or drunk’ proposals, while his horrified colleagues vetoed his idea of a snap election fought on the House of Lords issue – an ‘insane’ idea, said one minister, ‘the act of a selfish lunatic’; Rosebery recalled Palmerston’s prophecy that Gladstone would one day ‘ruin the Liberal Party and die in a madhouse’. Gladstone warned his colleagues in January that he intended to resign and – when they did not blink – finally carried out his threat on 2 March 1894. Some ministers broke down at his last Cabinet meeting on 1 March – which he afterwards contemptuously called the ‘blubbering Cabinet’ – and later that day he made his last appearance and interventions in the House of Commons, never again setting foot in parliament after a membership going back over 60 years, though he kept his seat until the 1895 general election, which he did not contest.58 Gladstone wanted to go down to history as plain ‘Mr Gladstone’. He had refused a knighthood in 1859 and offers of a peerage in 1874 and 1885. He was not an egalitarian and had great respect for rank and the social hierarchy but always saw himself as a commoner. The Lords, says Jenkins, was not a forum that would have suited him. In 1894 the Queen curtly said she did not offer her retiring PM a peerage only because she knew he would refuse it. He encouraged his wife to decline the offer of a separate peerage in her own right.59 Queen Victoria could hardly conceal her delight at Gladstone’s departure; the only problem was it had not come soon enough. Both had contributed to their relationship deteriorating from bad to appalling over the years. Both were relieved it had come to an end. She had described him as ‘half mad’ and as a ‘dictator’; he felt ‘the Queen alone is enough to kill any man’. Praise from her came only when he did something like make a speech supporting the erection of a monument of Disraeli. The thought of having to make this speech had made him ill for two days beforehand. He was careful to insist he was ‘loyal to the Throne’. He gave instructions to his family to ‘keep in the background’, after his death, details from his side of the personal relations between him and the Queen. The Queen’s handling of his resignation deeply offended and wounded him, and he would brood over her personal discourtesy – virtually dismissing him as if ‘settling a tradesman’s bill’ – for the rest of his life. Gladstone expected and wanted to be formally asked about his successor – and would have nominated Lord



96 After Number 10

Spencer, the top Liberal in the Cabinet most committed to Home Rule. But the Queen did not consult him and sent instead for Lord Rosebery – a choice that dismayed him; he would have preferred even Harcourt over Rosebery. When they briefly met by chance a few years later in Biarritz in 1897 the Queen was polite enough (and shook hands with him for the first time he could remember) but Gladstone thought she had become more feeble and would soon abdicate. She was pleased to see that he was ‘much aged’.60 After Gladstone’s resignation Rosebery’s Liberal government lasted only 15 months. The G.O.M. did not think much of its performance or the new leadership. He disliked the way in which Rosebery more or less binned Home Rule. He regretted having brought the ‘difficult’ Rosebery to the front and making him Foreign Secretary, where they had had policy clashes. ‘I cannot understand him – he remains a closed book to me’, Gladstone complained in July 1894. ‘He never consults me.’ His successor, he noted, ‘has been under no obligation to give me his confidence, and he has entirely withheld it as to inner matters, while retaining unimpaired all his personal friendliness. He does not owe his present position in any way to me, and has no sort of debt to pay.’ Later in 1896 Gladstone was quoted as saying that ‘he gave Rosebery up altogether as a competent man for Liberal leadership – for lack of judgment and even sense’.61 Nor did the successor regime please him in other ways. He disliked Harcourt’s budget and the new graduated death duties on land. He had reservations about aspects of the Welsh Church Disestablishment legislation and ministers feared he might intervene to speak out against it at the committee stage – it fell with the government. He recorded a damning general all-going-to-the-dogs impression of the political scene, with ‘an anarchical Cabinet, abundant pledges, obstructive opposition, compulsory acquiescence in small achievement, and an apathy and languor in the general mind curiously combined with a decided appetite for novelties and for promises apart from the prospect of performance’.62 The problem was Gladstone had become out-of-date and out of touch with the party and the new ideas coming into it. Had he stood aside earlier, the Liberals may have been better able to make the transition to a new and effective leadership and to adapt themselves to new social forces and political challenges. ‘I am a survival’, was how Gladstone put it, ‘a survival from the time of Sir Robert Peel’. His colleagues ‘felt this’ – they were decades younger than him and thought his retirement overdue. ‘I cannot sympathise with much of the talk of the present day and they knew it.’ He said to Lionel Tollemache he was ‘Conservative in a certain sense’. It would have been more accurate to say ‘Peelite’, for he admitted he yearned for ‘the impossible revival of the men and the ideas of my first 20 years which immediately followed the first Reform Act.’ In 1896 he looked back nostalgically to the statesmen of old and the days of Melbourne, Russell,



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Wellington and Peel – ‘we have fallen miles since then’. ‘Rather than be under any government now’, he told Lord Rendel, ‘in such matters, he would like to have back the Tories of old days’.63 ‘The future is to me a blank’, he confessed in 1896. ‘I cannot at all guess what is coming.’ He was, he said, ‘not so much afraid either of Democracy or of Science as of the love of money. This seems to me to be a growing evil. Also, there is a danger from the growth of the dreadful military spirit.’ At other times he denounced ‘the mad race and rivalry of armament’ and fulminated ‘militarism is a reversion towards barbarism’. He spoke critically of imperialism and ‘Jingoism’. In the last months of his life in 1898, he was concerned about ‘the gloom and anxiety of the general outlook … the prospect in Europe was more and more overclouded’. On a cruise of the Baltic in 1895 he had seen the Kaiser reviewing the German fleet at the opening of the Kiel Canal and predicted: ‘This means war!’64 Gladstone liked to refer to his ‘political death’ in 1894. But, as Feuchtwanger noted, his ‘authority was … still so great that any move on his part caused more than a ripple in the muddied waters of Liberal politics. Nobody could be certain he might not sweep back into the arena as he had done before.’ In July 1894 he had been asked about Home Rule and said, ‘if I could still do anything for that, I would – but as to all the rest, I have done with it’. However, echoing events of 20 years earlier, his controversial intervention on the issue of the Armenian massacres brought him back briefly onto the political stage, meeting deputations, writing to the press and making his last great public speeches. He called for strong action and argued the Turkish empire should be wiped off the map. The more direct impact was on the infighting within his own unhappy party. Shortly after Gladstone’s September 1896 speech in Liverpool, Rosebery – ill at ease and miserable under his great predecessor’s shadow and looking for a way out of the leadership – resigned, saying Gladstone had dealt him the coup de grace ‘by enabling discontented Liberals to pelt me with your authority’.65 Gladstone lived for a little over four years after retiring as prime minister. Colleagues and visitors reported that though an old man, he still seemed well, cheerful and in good spirits, and relatively vigorous for the first three years or so, into late 1897. A cataract operation in May 1894 was not wholly successful, leaving him virtually half-blind, so that reading and writing became more difficult. But his ‘table talk’ was still sharp and opinionated, and he remained intellectually active in retirement, still spending many hours at his desk in the ‘Temple of Peace’, his library at Hawarden Castle, his home in Flintshire. He published in these years his translation of Horace’s Odes, some long journal articles on theology, and two substantial volumes on the works of Bishop Butler. His theological scholarship was ‘spirited’ but ‘not very subtle’ according to Jenkins; ‘old-fashioned … and out-of-date’ according to Matthew. He had received various offers for his autobiography – £5,000 from one publisher in 1887, £25,000 from another



98 After Number 10

in 1891, and Andrew Carnegie had offered in 1887 the huge sum of £100,000 (£5 million today). The latter would have dwarfed Disraeli’s post-Number 10 literary earnings but Gladstone signed no contract. He wrote some autobiographical fragments and left papers on some particular episodes but never planned or worked on a proper volume of memoirs. Invited to make a United States tour in the autumn of 1894, Gladstone instead sent an axe that was exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair.66 The Gladstones had sold their London house during his second premiership. Rosebery did not harry them out of Number 10. Most of the retirement years were spent at Hawarden, interspersed with a number of trips in the winter months to Cannes in the South of France, wealthy friends picking up the bills and providing accommodation. Gladstone was a rich man. The family’s Hawarden estate (which was not formally owned by the G.O.M. himself) was 7,000 acres and produced an income of £10–12,000 a year. He effectively gave away most of his own money in the 1890s, settling large capital sums on his children and giving £40,000 and 20,000 of his own books (which he moved himself to the new building in a wheel barrow) to set up the St Deiniol’s Library (a centre for theological study) at Hawarden. When he died his will was proved at £57,000 (around £3 million today).67 Gladstone fell ill in late 1897 and as his condition worsened and his pain grew, cancer was diagnosed. He died, aged 88, at Hawarden on 19 May 1898. He was given a state funeral at Westminster Abbey after his coffin had lain in state in Westminster Hall. There was more pomp and ceremony than with most prime-ministerial funerals of the last 150 years (save for Wellington and Churchill) but it marked the passing of someone ‘iconic for the century’, as Shannon says, a man who – like Queen Victoria herself, who died a couple of years later – had epitomised, symbolised and provided a background to an entire age.68

Lord Rosebery (resigned 22 June 1895) When Lord Rosebery left office in June 1895, he had been prime minister for just one year and 109 days. He was only 48 years old – the youngest former prime minister there had been for 67 years, and there has not been a younger former prime minister since then. He lived nearly another 34 years before he died in 1929. No one since Rosebery has had so long a postpremiership. For the first decade of that period there was a widespread expectation Rosebery would soon be back, heading another government or in a high national office. He remained a celebrity figure and a major presence on the political stage. But his star then faded, he dropped out of public life and became a sad, isolated and reclusive figure many years before he died. Rosebery’s premiership was a failure. Probably anyone taking over after Gladstone in 1894 would have struggled to chart a course, hold the



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government together, and overcome divisions in the Liberal Cabinet and the party. Leading from the Lords made Rosebery’s task even more difficult. He was personally not up to the challenge, being too temperamental, thinskinned and brittle a character to be an effective prime minister. He suffered in 1895 a complete nervous and physical breakdown, with serious influenza, depression and a recurrence of his chronic and disabling insomnia. Heavy doses of morphine and tranquillisers were needed to pull him through. Some commentators have speculated that in addition to the political and personal stresses and strains of office, Rosebery’s collapse was brought about by fear of being exposed in a homosexual scandal, linked to the Oscar Wilde trial, though his latest biographer, Leo McKinstry, has comprehensively demolished this conspiracy theory.69 The disintegration of Rosebery’s government was like a slow-motion rail crash, the end coming when ministers jumped at the opportunity to resign after losing a snap vote in the Commons on army supplies of cordite. Rosebery rushed off to see Queen Victoria at Windsor and as a parting honour she invested him with the Order of the Thistle (in 1892 he had become a Knight of the Garter). ‘There are two supreme pleasures in life’, he later wrote. ‘One is ideal, the other real. The ideal is when a man receives the seals of office from his Sovereign. The real pleasure comes when he hands them back.’ On his last night in Downing Street he dined with Gladstone and the two statesmen were described as being as ‘merry as boys out of school’. Lord Salisbury immediately called an election, the Conservatives winning a landslide majority. Rosebery felt the Liberals’ heavy defeat was ‘inevitable’ and a ‘great blessing’, forcing the party finally to confront pressing questions of policy, identity and strategy. Yet at the same time, it had all been a shattering experience, and Rosebery was, as McKinstry says, haunted by a sense of failure, for the rest of his life brooding on the traumas of 1894–95 and often declaring he wished he had never accepted office. Rosebery, after his ordeal in Number 10, was once described as like ‘a burnt child dreading the fire’. When chances of a return occurred in the years ahead, part of him always recoiled. For the rest of his life he held a celebratory dinner each year on the anniversary of the fatal cordite vote.70 The Liberals’ eviction from office caused financial headaches for Rosebery’s Home Secretary and a future prime minister, H.H. Asquith, who had to go back to earning his living at the bar. Rosebery himself, who was enormously wealthy, can scarcely have noticed the loss of his prime-ministerial salary. He had inherited his titles, estates and an income of £30,000 a year when only 21, going on to marry a Rothschild heiress, which increased his total income to £140,000 (something like £9 million a year today). At death he left £1.5 million (equivalent to over £50 million today), which did not include extensive properties made over to his heir several years before. He had grand houses at Mentmore, Berkeley Square, Dalmeny in Scotland, The Durdans at Epsom, a villa at Naples, thousands of acres, and a yacht. But



100 After Number 10

the death of his wife, Hannah, in 1890 had robbed him of a vital emotional prop and support. His grief was life-long, and the tragedy accentuated his solitariness, moodiness, introspection and dislike of the rough and tumble of political life. He remained a widower, though there are suggestions that at different times he contemplated remarriage to one of the daughters of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) and then to a young American actress. Horseracing and books were Rosebery’s great passions. He was successful on the turf and his horses had won the Derby twice in his short premiership, in 1894 and 1895. In 1905 he won a third Derby, his horse Cicero setting a new record time for the course. He once joked that ‘politics and racing were inconsistent which seemed a good reason to give up politics’. He had one of the most magnificent private libraries in the country. A voracious reader, he was also a noted writer. Having published a biography of William Pitt in 1891, he went on to write studies of Napoleon: The Last Phase (1900), Lord Randolph Churchill (1906) and Chatham: his Early Life and Connections (1910), together with many shorter essays and addresses. Professional historians tended to be sniffy but the books sold well. He turned down offers to write the biographies of Gladstone, Disraeli and Lord Kitchener, and refused to write his own memoirs or an autobiography. Disillusioned and disenchanted with politics, Rosebery had wanted to quit the Liberal leadership and retire from politics immediately after the 1895 general election. He continued nominally to head the party, while not giving it any real lead, for more than a year after the defeat. He was adamant he would no longer work with Sir William Harcourt – the political bruiser who had been his Chancellor of the Exchequer and led the party in the Commons – with whom he had bitterly clashed and who held Rosebery in contempt. He was looking for a way out from an intolerable position and in October 1896 seized upon Gladstone’s advocacy of strong action over the Armenian massacres, an issue on which the bulk of the party backed the G.O.M.’s line and wanted Rosebery to speak out more, to resign as party leader. He wanted, he told friends, to free himself from the ‘Gladstonian chains’ he had been bound by since he had entered politics and was through with the thankless role of acting as ‘Mr G’s political executor’. While there was unhappiness and discontent with Rosebery within the party, his supporters and allies were shocked and dismayed; Asquith later commented ‘there are many who cannot forget or forgive his timely escape, in a life-boat constructed to hold one person, from the water-logged ship.’ Rosebery believed the Liberal Party needed to change – moving beyond home rule and its ‘faddist’ programme, becoming something more than a party of protest or ‘a mad mob of dervishes, each waving his own flag and howling curses on everyone else’s’, widening its electoral support, and being alert to the danger of being displaced by the polarisation of the ‘forces of socialism and reaction’ – but he did not want to be involved in the hand-to-hand political fighting necessary to implement that change.



Peel to Rosebery 101

He seemed almost to want the party to change and then by acclamation to welcome him back as leader on his own terms. As Colin Matthew put it: ‘Rosebery was adept at the in-fighting required in government interdepartmental disputes, and he was skilful at making contact with the electorate. He had, however, little facility for, or interest in, sustained political management. But it was this quality which the Liberal party needed for reconstruction.’71 For a few years Rosebery busied himself with writing, travel and nonor only quasi-political speeches. Rosebery’s future was the subject of considerable speculation. He was still relatively young, had experience of the highest offices, and had real political star-quality. He sent out mixed and confusing signals, however, and his political intentions and plans seemed changeable, elusive and mysterious even to himself, and to his increasingly bewildered supporters in the party and the public. He refused even to subscribe to Liberal Party funds, said he had never been happier than since his ‘abdication’, and shuddered at his ‘revolting experience of the higher positions in British government, … it will take some time to wash out of my mouth the taste of the last administration’. But he played a prominent role in the 1898 London County Council elections, supporting the progressives (earlier, in 1889–90 and 1892, he had been elected to the LCC and served as its chairman), and he won plaudits and grabbed attention with defiantly imperialistic and rapturously received speeches during the Fashoda crisis. The Liberals staggered on under the joint leadership of Harcourt and Lord Spencer before, in December 1898, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was elected leader. Rosebery was by now more popular than he had been as prime minister and many of his supporters regarded Campbell-Bannerman as a second-rate figure, a stop-gap who would just keep the seat warm until their hero was ready to reclaim his rightful place. But he remained maddeningly ambiguous and unknowable, being variously described at the time as ‘the veiled prophet’ and ‘a dark horse in a loose box’. ‘What he likes’, commented one insider, ‘is to figure largely in the mind of the public and at the same time to be independent and thus not over-weighted with responsibility.’72 In 1899 Rosebery was elected at the top of the poll to Epsom District Council (with his gracious house and racing stables, he was a leading figure in the small town). He was unanimously voted chairman but characteristically refused the post, though he was an active member of the council, scrupulously attending meetings through the three years he served.73 This was worthy and indeed unique for a former prime minister, but not what those who wanted to see him back in political office had in mind. The three or four years following the outbreak of the South African War in 1899 were the crucial period in which Rosebery might have returned to a position of national or party leadership. But he lost the chance, partly through his own doubts, hesitations and mistakes and partly because of the way the wider political situation developed and changed.



102 After Number 10

Rosebery distrusted Milner and Chamberlain and thought that with better diplomacy the Boer War might have been averted but once it started he strongly supported it (though in 1901 he was involved in a secret approach to see whether a negotiated peace was possible, which Lord Salisbury rejected). With the Liberal Party in argumentative disarray over the war Rosebery’s ultimate aims were not always clear or consistent. He appeared at some times to be wanting to battle for the future of the party (the Liberal League was formed with him as president to press the Liberal Imperialist case against the anti-war ‘Little Englanders’ in the party). At other times he apparently wanted to provoke a formal split in the party; his supporters schemed to undermine or displace Campbell-Bannerman as leader. Rosebery also appeared to hanker after a political realignment and a non-party or above-party political and personal future. To add to the confusion he frustrated his supporters and allies because, after his dramatic interventions and big public speeches, he tended to retreat into inscrutable silence, or he disappeared to the Continent, rather than engage in political management, organisation or follow-up. He was compared to a ‘revolving light, now flashing out brilliantly, now lost in complete darkness’. Even a fervent supporter like Edward Grey was driven publicly to complain about his refusal to lead, saying Rosebery was in danger of becoming ‘like some astral body outside the planetary system of party politics’.74 Cynics would argue that Rosebery’s commitment to the ‘country before party’ politics of ‘national efficiency’ was only superficial, tactical or rhetorical (‘pure claptrap’, according to Campbell-Bannerman). In the process he came out with some anti-political and anti-democratic pronouncements about the need for strong ‘Cromwellian’ leadership and a ‘dictator’ with ‘iron will’ that sounded odd coming from the mouth of a former Liberal prime minister. He expressed the voguish ideas of administrative, institutional and educational reform, criticisms of ‘amateurism’, and ideas of a ‘business Cabinet’, in the process getting involved with groups like the Fabians. But the key point was Rosebery’s ingrained distaste for conventional party politics and the party system, and his interest in the possibilities of a centrist non-party coalition. He had resigned as president of the Scottish Liberal Association and refused in 1901, when Kimberley wished to retire, to become Liberal leader in the House of Lords because he did not want to commit himself but instead to establish a cross-bench or neutral position that could one day see him heading a coalition ‘formed of the best men of both parties who might perhaps unite under him’. He would become ‘the “patriotic statesman” prepared to serve his country at a time of national crisis’, as Searle puts it. Journalists speculated that if Lord Salisbury’s successor could be appointed directly by plebiscite or referendum, then Rosebery would emerge the winner; others envisaged him as the leader of ‘a great National Party’.75 During the infighting in the Liberal Party Rosebery and his acolytes like Grey and Haldane (but probably not Asquith who was a stronger party




man) underestimated Campbell-Bannerman (a tougher and shrewder figure than his detractors thought) and overestimated their own strength and support. Campbell-Bannerman carried with him the centre and the bulk of the party. Three-quarters or more of MPs were mainstream loyalists. Rosebery showed his mastery of publicity and ability to command attention with provocative speeches and declarations about the need for a ‘clean slate’, ‘plough[ing] my furrow alone’, ‘irreconcilable divisions of opinion’, being ‘outside the tabernacle’ and moments of ‘definite separation’. But there was, as a contemporary insider noted, ‘no great flocking of persons to the Rosebery standard’. Unlike ‘C-B’, Rosebery either did not understand he was fighting for his political life or was not sure he wanted to win. Others thought so too. ‘Rosebery is no good in a real fight’, concluded one Conservative politician; Balfour, the Tory leader, came to believe ‘Rosebery was hopeless’. He was a poseur with ‘no grip of anything except appearances’, was Beatrice Webb’s view. Even fellow Liberal Imperialists became disillusioned: ‘he is not an easy or altogether reliable Chief’, admitted Haldane, while Asquith felt he was a man who ‘does nothing for the party and everything for himself’ and eventually, according to his wife Margot, gave up on Rosebery ‘as a hopeless coward’.76 The uncertain prospects for either a Rosebery-led ‘national’ coalition or a Roseberyite take-over of the Liberal Party faded as two-party partisanship revived with the ending of the Boer War and controversies over the 1902 Education Act, and were finally ended with Joe Chamberlain’s launch of his protectionist crusade in 1903, when the Liberals united in defence of free trade. Rosebery was left stranded, his position weakened, looking increasingly marginalised. ‘It is humanly speaking impossible that I should ever hold office again’, he said in August 1902. It would be ‘impossible’ for him to form a future Liberal government, he noted privately in 1903, and he would ‘unhesitatingly’ refuse to join such a government. Behind the scenes the King had apparently tried to persuade him in 1901 to come back and resume the Liberal leadership and in 1905 again appealed to him unsuccessfully to take office. By 1904 it was becoming widely understood the King would send for Campbell-Bannerman when the time came to change the government.77 Rosebery’s political eclipse and redundancy was confirmed in 1905. The leading Liberal Imperialists in the Commons – Asquith, Grey and Haldane – now ceased to involve Rosebery or inform him about their plans and manoeuvres, keeping secret from him the so-called ‘Relugas Pact’ they made about taking office – with conditions – under Campbell-Bannerman, for fear ‘his interest would be to wreck it’. He was kept in the dark about the understanding they came to with Campbell-Bannerman about a ‘stepby-step’ approach to the Irish question. Rosebery’s dramatic speech at Bodmin in November 1905, denouncing Home Rule and insisting he could not ‘serve under that banner’, was an act of political self-destruction, finally



104 After Number 10

cutting him off from his erstwhile supporters and ensuring there would be no place for him in the Liberal government that Campbell-Bannerman – who thought he was ‘off his head’ – would soon form. Once he realised what had been going on, Rosebery felt betrayed and angry. CampbellBannerman – who had come out on top – was relieved he had been ‘delivered … from the difficulty of having to ask R[osebery] to join’. There are even suggestions that the wily ‘C-B’ had given a pledge to Redmond, leader of the Irish Nationalists, that Rosebery would not be asked to join the government and – some believed at the time and later – laid a cunning trap to dispose of a rival and enemy, into which Rosebery threw himself. Once Campbell-Bannerman became prime minister, appointed the leading Roseberyites to senior positions and won a landslide majority, Rosebery was effectively politically finished and a political ‘ex-’.78 He stayed on the political stage a few years longer, increasingly isolated and irrelevant with virtually no personal followers, sitting on the crossbenches in the Lords, a purely negative critic of the Liberal Government. It might have been better for his reputation had he taken himself out of the way by accepting the post of ambassador to the United States pressed on him in November 1906 by Sir Edward Grey and the King, but he refused. Balfour once remarked Rosebery’s great political misfortune was he had ‘joined the wrong side’ and, at the end of his life, Rosebery himself mused he had made a ‘very big’ mistake in following Gladstone rather than Disraeli when he entered politics.79 His alienation from the Liberals now became even more pronounced and his attitudes and views markedly Conservative. But those Conservatives who thought he might be a powerful recruit to their cause discovered what the Liberals had long learned: that you always knew where you were with Rosebery: he would always let you down. Having opposed the introduction of old-age pensions, Rosebery attacked Lloyd George’s 1909 ‘People’s Budget’ as ‘tyrannical and socialistic’ and heralding a ‘social and political revolution’, and he defended his fellow aristocratic landowners as a ‘poor but honest class’. When the crunch came, he declared he would not vote against it, fearing the Lords’ actions in defeating the budget could imperil the existence of the second chamber. As McKinstry says, Rosebery was now despised on both sides of the political divide. Liberals viewed him as a reactionary, Tories as a coward (a ‘highly gifted political eunuch’ who, ‘as always, fails at the moment of crisis’, said one). From early in his career Rosebery had been a proponent of House of Lords reform and in 1907 had chaired a Lords select committee on the issue (he had been a poor chairman and the committee’s report disappeared without trace and made no impact). As the constitutional crisis over the Lords developed, he introduced resolutions in 1910 calling for reform and setting out his own proposals for changing its composition. He then denounced the government’s legislation to remove the Lords’ veto powers as ‘ill-judged, revolutionary, and partisan’, which would leave the upper house a




‘useless sham’. But rather than dying in the last ditch with the Unionist peers, he announced at the last moment in the crucial debate on 10 August 1911 he would vote with the government. He justified what Rhodes James calls his ‘inept and theatrical performance’ by arguing he had been able to sway by his action sufficient votes to help ensure the government got its narrow majority and thus stave off the ‘swamping’ of the Lords by the mass creation of peers. But whatever influence he had left was now destroyed. It was his last speech there, and Rosebery never again entered the House of Lords.80 At the age of 64 Rosebery’s political career was over. In 1909 he had been called ‘an unused asset in the national locker’ and some had speculated about him re-emerging as an ‘above party’ leader to help the country through the constitutional crisis. In 1913, Balfour and Lord Esher suggested to the Palace that Rosebery might be sent for to form a caretaker government while a general election was held, as a way out of the deadlock and mounting crisis over Irish Home Rule. Such ideas were non-starters, as Rosebery himself insisted, as well as constitutionally dubious given they would have involved the dismissal of the incumbent prime minister and government. Rosebery no longer had the necessary standing, the influence, the following or the appetite for office. ‘If I were to join the battle’, he told one confidant, ‘I should find myself back again where I will not be.’ He had come to hate and detest politics – ‘this evil-smelling bog’, as he called it, from which ‘I was always trying to extricate myself’.81 Back in 1904 Rosebery had been an isolated critic of the Anglo-French Entente, predicting that in the end it would mean war with Germany. When war came, his house Dalmeny was requisitioned as a hospital and he undertook some low-key public duties: patriotic speeches at recruitment rallies, appeals for funds and visits to hospitals. When Lloyd George became prime minister in 1916, in an effort to bolster his administration he offered Rosebery the post of Lord Privy Seal – he would not have departmental duties but serve in a ‘consultative capacity’ – but he refused. It is not clear what Rosebery at this stage would have brought to the government other than the public appeal of his name. In November 1917 tragedy struck when his younger son, Neil Primrose – who had been an MP and promising junior minister – was killed in action while serving with the army in the Middle East. His death was a devastating blow to Rosebery. A year later in November 1918 Rosebery was felled by a massive stroke that left him partially paralysed for the rest of his life. During his last ten years he was a largely forgotten figure, living a lonely and melancholy invalid existence, becoming virtually blind and dogged again by insomnia. He died at his house in Epsom on 21 May 1929 aged 82, and was buried at Dalmeny in Scotland. For all his glamour, gifts and brilliant early promise, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion he had been a political failure: an unhappy and unsuccessful prime minister and then an unhappy and unsuccessful ex-prime minister.



106 After Number 10

5

Lord Salisbury (resigned 11 July 1902) When Lord Salisbury stood down as Conservative prime minister, on 11 July 1902, he had held that office three times for a total of 13 years and eight months (1885–86, 1886–92, 1895–1902), the fourth-longest cumulative tenure and a record not equalled since then. He was 72, depressed, weary, feeling his age and in poor health. He had first served as a Cabinet minister 36 years earlier and had been at the top of his party for 20 years. Imperturbable and remote, he had come to seem a fixed part of the political landscape, what Curzon called ‘that strange, powerful, inscrutable and brilliant obstructive deadweight at the top’.1 Salisbury’s grip on affairs had been weakening for some time. In most of his governments he was his own Foreign Secretary as well as prime minister, and the combined burden was too much for him by the late 1890s. His family and his doctors were concerned about the overwork and his increasingly frequent attacks of influenza and bronchitis. He took little exercise except for tricycle rides (accompanied by a footman to push him uphill), and his quirks – such as his failure to recognise even close colleagues and his need for solitude – were becoming more pronounced. Discreet political pressure from senior colleagues and the Queen was needed to prise him out of the Foreign Office, which he reluctantly gave up only in November 1900. His wife’s long illness and her death in November 1899 had been a massive blow from which he never fully recovered. He felt deeply the loss of Queen Victoria in January 1901 – it symbolised that the world he had known was coming to an end; subsequently, politics had ‘lost their zest’ for him, he later admitted. ‘His heart’, says Andrew Roberts, ‘was no longer really in the job.’2 On the surface Salisbury’s political position was secure until his decision to retire. He had won another landslide general election victory as recently as October 1900. But the foundations of his authority had started to crumble. His politics were reactive and defensive, and he was unable to 107



Salisbury to Asquith

meet ‘the need for a creative response to the problems of a maturing industrial society and an increasingly challenged empire’.3 Colonial Secretary Joe Chamberlain, the great ‘political weather-maker’ of the time, was becoming harder to keep in check. The disasters in South Africa had shown that Salisbury was not in the mould of a successful war leader. His cautious, non-aligned foreign policy seemed to be leaving Britain dangerously isolated and was increasingly challenged inside the Cabinet. No sooner had he finally quit the Foreign Office than an alliance with Japan was negotiated and agreed, about which the prime minister was deeply sceptical. The higher military spending and increased taxes brought about by the Boer War were a ticking time-bomb under the government. Salisbury had once mocked old prime ministers clinging onto office regardless of failing powers. ‘Disinclined to sow any new harvest of future fame’, they would neglect big, long-term problems. Elderly PMs like Russell and Palmerston, he wrote, would reveal as soon as they opened their mouths to speak that ‘their intellects have evaporated in very harmless but very attenuated twaddle’. He did not want that fate but, like many long-serving leaders, he did hang onto office too long and it might have been better for his reputation had he retired two or three years earlier. His senior colleagues thought it was time for him to go, but they did not force him out. He might well have gone 18 months sooner than he did but for the war, and he decided privately to leave office as soon as it ended, and did so with obvious relief six weeks after the peace treaty was signed in May 1902.4 The many relatives found berths in his government had provoked taunts about the ‘Hotel Cecil’ and ‘Bob’s your uncle’ but Arthur Balfour, Salisbury’s nephew and effectively his deputy, was pretty much the inevitable successor and the handover went smoothly. Rich (his income was around £60,000 a year and at death he left £310,000 – equivalent to about £20 million today) and possessor of a large estate and an ancient title, Salisbury could afford to be indifferent to honours and wealth. He had been made a Knight of the Garter in 1878 but had twice refused Queen Victoria’s offers of a dukedom. From King Edward he took a GCVO (a Grand Cross of the Royal Victoria Order), which he plainly regarded as a mere bauble.5 Salisbury dropped out of active politics when he retired. He talked about the need to ‘get out of the way’. He did not speak again in the Lords. He kept up with the political news, and Balfour is said to have ‘frequently consulted him’,6 but he was less skilful and more unlucky than his uncle, and everything soon started to fall apart for the government. ‘Things will be in a very fluid state after my disappearance’ Salisbury had gloomily forecast in an after-me-the-deluge mood before he resigned. He was right. He strongly opposed Chamberlain’s campaign for tariff reform, regarding taxes on food as politically impossible and as unlikely to bind the empire closer together. It led to a damaging party split and bitter infighting which Balfour was unable to control or stop, and Salisbury fumed about his nephew’s weak-



108 After Number 10

ness in allowing a ‘dual leadership’ to develop, predicting ‘political disaster’ unless his successor asserted himself more as prime minister. Sure enough in 1906 the Conservatives were to experience an electoral meltdown. Salisbury had managed to keep the dynamic and thrusting ‘Radical Joe’ inside the ministerial tent, which was beyond Gladstone before him and Balfour afterwards, who both had their administrations wrecked by him.7 A deeply-religious person and always keen to defend the interests of the established church, Salisbury was unhappy about the way in which Balfour failed to oppose an amendment to his controversial Education Bill that made the school manager rather than the parish priest responsible for children’s religious education, fuming that had he known that Balfour ‘meant to take power from the clergyman, he would have put off his resignation for a year to prevent it’. He refused to go down to London to vote for the Bill.8 Following the death of the Queen, Salisbury’s departure seemed to many to mark the end of an era. He felt so himself. Looking ahead in August 1902, he thought ‘we are near some great change in public affairs, in which the forces that contend for the mastery among us will be differently ranged and balanced’. The situation facing the country and the empire was ‘menacing and dangerous’. ‘The times’, he predicted, ‘will be very difficult.’ Events at home and abroad over the years ahead proved him prescient.9 ‘All work has become a burden for him, and he longs for rest’, Salisbury’s private secretary had said when he left office. He enjoyed his grandchildren and motoring around in a new car. But his health went rapidly downhill, and he lived for just 13 months in retirement, dying, aged 73, on 22 August 1903 at Hatfield, his ancestral house. His obesity caused problems and there was trouble with an ulcerated leg; he nearly died of congestion of the kidneys, and then he had a fall and a heart attack. In the end ‘the machine was worn out’, as his doctor put it.10

Arthur Balfour (resigned 4 December 1905) One of the first things Arthur Balfour did after losing the premiership and going down to election defeat was to buy one of the new-fangled gramophones, complete with huge shiny brass sound-trumpet. He took it back to his house at Whittingehame in East Lothian, Scotland, to the delight of the swarm of nieces and nephews who met him as his car drove up on a wintery evening in January 1906. The next day was spent excitedly buying records at a music shop in Edinburgh. For a while as the music blared out, nothing else seemed of the slightest importance to the ex-prime minister and his relations. ‘Life goes on, no matter what the disaster of the moment’, is how Balfour’s latest biographer sums up his philosophical outlook and his ability to shrug off his political worries.11



Salisbury to Asquith 109

Balfour stands out as one of Britain’s least successful prime ministers but one of her most successful former prime ministers. He left Number 10 on 4 December 1905, having served three years and 145 days as prime minister. He was then 57 years old and was to live more than 24 years more, in which time he was a Cabinet minister, under three other prime ministers, for a total of 11 years. Some of his most important achievements came in, and much of his historical reputation rests upon, these post-premiership years. Coming at the tail end of a long period of Conservative dominance, his short premiership had ended ignominiously, with a bitterly divided party (split on the tariff reform issue) suffering a catastrophic defeat after Balfour resigned as PM and the incoming Liberal premier, CampbellBannerman, then called an immediate general election. The Conservatives lost more than half their MPs in the January 1906 election, and included in the wipe-out was Balfour himself, defeated in the Manchester East seat he had held for 20 years. After a loyalist was persuaded to retire, a safe seat was soon found for the defeated party leader and Balfour was returned for the City of London in a by-election in February 1906. On his return to parliament the old master of parliamentary jousts found that his polished and subtle dialectics cut no ice with the new prime minister, backed up with his enormous majority: ‘enough of this foolery!’, barked Campbell-Bannerman as Liberal MPs roared their delight.12 Rarely can a former prime minister have been cut down to size so effectively. Had the dynamic figure of Joseph Chamberlain not been removed from the scene by a disabling stroke in July 1906, it is possible Balfour would not have lasted long as Leader of the Opposition since the momentum was with the committed ‘whole hog’ tariff reformers, who were now in a majority in the Conservative Party. Against his own judgement the weakened Balfour had had little choice but to give ground and move more in the Chamberlainite direction in a compromise deal worked out in February 1906, accepting that fiscal reform must be the ‘first constructive work’ of the party.13 Balfour did not believe that producing detailed policies was the role of the Opposition; rather, its job was to oppose the government – criticising it, making its life difficult, obstructing it where possible (as he had done as a young MP, as part of the ‘Fourth Party’, engaged in parliamentary guerrilla warfare against Gladstone in the 1880s). But the strategy that Balfour developed to do this and to energise, unify and distract his party was risky and controversial, and in the end backfired, damaging and then destroying his own leadership. Intellectual, lofty and remote, Balfour did not believe in campaigning to boost his popularity: ‘I am certainly not going to condescend to go about the country explaining that I am “honest and industrious” like a second coachman out of place!’ He did little to reform outdated and creaking party organisation. But he helped make Edwardian Britain’s party politics bitter and adversarial. Immediately after his defeat he declared the Conservative



110 After Number 10

(Unionist) Party would, whatever the outcome of the election, ‘still control … the destinies of this great empire’. What this statement meant in practice was that the huge in-built Conservative majority in the unelected House of Lords would be mobilised to wreck the Liberals’ programme by amending or blocking those measures passed by the House of Commons but objected to by the opposition. Some popular social policy and trade union legislation was allowed through but other bills close to the heart of the Liberal base were stymied. Rather than being a watchdog of the constitution, argued Lloyd George, the Lords had become ‘Mr Balfour’s poodle’.14 Balfour’s championing of increased naval spending and dreadnought building revived his party’s spirits and increased pressure on the government. But the Lords’ rejection of Lloyd George’s 1909 budget triggered a major political and constitutional crisis and turned out to be a serious blunder. In the ensuing general elections in January and December 1910 the Conservatives advanced enough to deny the Liberals an overall majority, but with the government now dependent on the Irish nationalists (and Labour), moves to curb the Lords’ veto powers and then introduce Home Rule became inevitable. Balfour’s strong unionism and his refusal to become ‘another Robert Peel’ were insuperable obstacles in the way of Lloyd George’s secret plan for a coalition government, floated in inter-party talks in the summer of 1910. By the end of that year Balfour had fought his third general election as party leader, and that he had won none of them showed the limits to his electoral appeal. Furthermore he had antagonised important elements in his own party. The tariff reformers felt betrayed and angry because of his offer, during the December 1910 election campaign, of a referendum on the issue. Then the die-hard Right of the party revolted when in 1911 he ordered Tory peers to abstain and let through the Liberals’ Parliament Bill. Earlier, in 1910, he had told Palace advisers he would be willing to form a government had the King wanted to reject Asquith’s request for guarantees if a mass creation of peers became necessary and the prime minister resigned – a move that would have been risky for the Conservatives and for the monarchy. But he then came to see last-ditch opposition to Lords’ reform as pointless. His enemies in the party increasingly saw him as vacillating, indecisive and weak, and a ‘Balfour Must Go’ campaign developed. He needed little persuading, with the endless struggles leaving him feeling that sections of his party had gone ‘temporarily crazy’ and that politics had become ‘odious’, and he quit the Tory leadership in November 1911, commenting waspishly a ‘slower brain’ might be more welcome to the party.15 Leaving the party leadership gave Balfour more time for his non-political interests. He was a serious ‘intellectual statesman’, serving at various times on the council of the Royal Society, as president of the British Academy, and as chancellor of Edinburgh and (from 1919) Cambridge universities. He produced a number of heavyweight philosophical essays, lectures and




books in his post-premiership years, on subjects such as ‘Decadence’, ‘Beauty and the Criticism of Beauty’, and ‘Theism and Humanism’. He had wide-ranging interests in music, art, science and technology, and psychical research (occasionally attending séances). He was fanatical about golf and tennis, and enjoyed his extended family and the country-house social round. Balfour never married though he had a close and romantic longterm relationship with Lady Mary Elcho (wife of a Scottish aristocrat). Intelligent, rich, deceptively languid and charming, he was, however, at heart a bleak, solitary, detached and impenetrable character, and a hardworking, ambitious and ruthless professional politician.16 Balfour was 63 when he resigned as Tory leader and had no intention of retiring from active politics. He played no part in the selection of his successor but expected and favoured Austen Chamberlain who in the event lost to Bonar Law. Although different in character and style Balfour and Bonar Law grew to like, trust and appreciate one another. They worked well together: Bonar Law consulted him, and Balfour gave ungrudging support, advice and loyalty to the new leader. Balfour played a unique ‘double role’ between 1911 and 1914: in some ways a highly committed partisan and in others an elder statesman above politics. He seems to have been amused by the rapid switches sometimes required between ‘abusing the government’ on the platform or in the Commons and then ‘solving their difficulties’ in Whitehall committee-rooms.17 The ‘abuse’ flowed freely on the Irish question, where the politics of Home Rule became highly charged and confrontational. Balfour strongly supported Bonar Law’s line, which came dangerously close to countenancing unconstitutional (and even armed) resistance by Ulstermen to the government. At one point, in 1913, Balfour suggested to the Palace a constitutionally dubious scheme in which the King should consider dismissing the Asquith ministry and installing a caretaker prime minister who would hold the reins while an election was held on Home Rule; he proposed Rosebery or himself (or both jointly) for this emergency role, saying that if Rosebery refused he would not himself hesitate to become ‘sole minister’. Later, in 1914, he seems to have had a moderating influence when the Tories toyed with the hazardous idea of trying to amend the annual Army Act to prevent the government from using the army in Ulster until after an election. In the last resort he was prepared to support independence rather than Home Rule for Ireland, provided that Ulster was excluded. But when all-party talks were held in July 1914 to try (unsuccessfully) to broker a compromise, Asquith was adamant that Balfour be excluded as ‘a real wrecker’ on the issue.18 On defence and foreign policy, however, Balfour operated independently of the Tory frontbench, and ministers were happy to consult him, draw on his experience and knowledge, and treat him as a sort of ‘cross-bench guru’.19 While still Leader of the Opposition he had given impressive



112 After Number 10

evidence to a Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) review of the German invasion threat, received classified War Office information, and discreetly supported Haldane’s army reforms. In 1912 he turned down a government offer to make him a member of the CID (which his own government had created in 1902), but he served on another invasion inquiry sub-committee in 1913. Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and Hankey, the secretary of the CID, sent him copies of confidential papers and kept him briefed on developments. Grey, the Liberal Foreign Secretary, consulted him from time to time; in 1912 Balfour sent him a long memorandum on the need to strengthen the Anglo-French alliance. Piers Brendon has called this the process by which ‘having been dispensed with by his party, Balfour apparently became indispensable to the nation’, or ‘play[ing] on both sides from the middle’.20 Once war came in 1914 Balfour was drawn even further into policymaking in an unprecedented and rather anomalous way, becoming a full member of the CID and a member of Asquith’s War Council even though the Tories remained in opposition. He soon proved his worth, showing qualities of imagination and foresight in war planning and on strategic issues. Balfour’s strengths were as an adviser, thinker, committeeman and policymaker under others rather than as a government or party leader in his own right.21 Recognising that the war would be long, he argued strongly for the need to maintain the country’s economic strength and pointed out the dangers of the excessive recruiting into the army of key industrial workers. He opposed conscription and was a critic of the futile mass slaughter on the western front, supporting instead the ill-fated Dardanelles campaign and serving on the committee that planned it. He worked alongside Lloyd George on the War Munitions Committee. In May 1915 Churchill suggested that Balfour should replace Kitchener as War Secretary while Bonar Law proposed to Lloyd George there should be a new prime minister: either Balfour, Grey or Lloyd George himself. Instead, Asquith stayed put in Number 10 but formed a coalition. Balfour gained the most senior of the posts given to the Conservatives and became First Lord of the Admiralty. He was second in status in the new Cabinet, ahead of his party leader, Bonar Law, and behind only Asquith. The admirals liked working for him (perhaps because his regime was more calm and orderly than Churchill’s) but he did not provide the drive, direction and inspiration the department needed in wartime. Lloyd George had opposed his appointment, arguing to Asquith the post needed a younger and more energetic figure. Although he had presciently warned before the war about the submarine threat he did not come up with any effective solution or response (complaining the increasing U-boat sinkings of shipping were ‘very tiresome’).22 However, he ensured the work Churchill had started on ‘land ships’ was continued, insisting on taking a ride in one of the prototype tanks. He handled the aftermath of the Battle of Jutland ineptly,




dismaying the public and his colleagues by issuing a communiqué with a bare list of losses without putting a positive spin on the overall outcome. After the Easter Rebellion in 1916 he supported the plan developed by Lloyd George to give the south of Ireland immediate Home Rule with Ulster excluded for the duration – fearing the alternative would mean more bloodshed in Ireland and arguing that winning the war was more important than preserving the union – but Unionist opposition scuppered it. His decision to jump ship in December 1916 helped bring down Asquith and swing Unionist support behind Lloyd George. Balfour was not a prime mover or a plotter, and was willing to see Asquith continue as PM (undertaking the ‘ordinary duties’ of the office and leading the Commons) while being convinced Lloyd George should be given a free hand to run the war as chairman of a powerful new War Committee.23 This arrangement was unacceptable to Asquith, who also would not serve under any other premier. At one point Asquith refused a compromise suggestion from Bonar Law that Balfour rather than the Tory leader himself become PM. (A year earlier, however, in December 1915, Balfour had privately ruled himself out as Asquith’s successor, saying he felt he could not carry parliament and the country with him.) Even though he knew that Lloyd George wanted to remove him from the Admiralty while Asquith wanted to keep him there, Balfour believed Lloyd George was indispensable and he was willing to break the logjam by pressing his resignation as First Lord on Asquith. With Bonar Law backing him, and Balfour agreeing to become Foreign Secretary and lend his prestige and weight to the new government, the pieces then started to fall into place for a Lloyd George premiership. Churchill later memorably described Balfour passing from serving one prime minister to another, and from one coalition government to another, ‘like a powerful graceful cat walking delicately and unsoiled across a rather muddy street’.24 The implication was that, intent on political survival and motivated by love of office, he had no fixed loyalties or principles. Asquith felt Balfour had betrayed him. But a good case can be made that his conduct was more selfless than Asquith’s and was motivated by the conviction that more dynamic and decisive leadership was needed to win the war. Balfour had said in 1912 he would never be prime minister again but would like to be Foreign Secretary. He served three years in that post, 1916–19. Although Lloyd George once maliciously remarked that Balfour’s place in history would be little more than ‘like the scent on a pocket handkerchief’, he rated him highly, considering him the ‘ideal man for the Foreign Office and to assist the Cabinet on big issues’, praising his courage even in the darkest moments, and saying his contributions during the war and afterwards in making the peace were ‘of the highest order’. They were close collaborators over the six years of Lloyd George’s premiership. Balfour supported the continuation of the coalition in 1918 and in 1922, coming



114 After Number 10

to view it as the best political counter to socialism. Balfour might have detested Lloyd George and what he stood for before the war, but after 1914 came to respect his organising and executive genius. He was fully prepared to play second fiddle to ‘the Little Man’, as he liked to call the prime minister. Lloyd George dominated foreign policy but, despite his irregular methods and reliance on his ‘Garden Suburb’ advisers, Balfour maintained good relations, ensured his views were heard and avoided clashes. He was not formally a member of the small War Cabinet but attended when foreign affairs were discussed (being present at over 300 of the more than 500 meetings held).25 In April–May 1917 he led a successful mission to Washington, establishing good relations with President Wilson, addressing the US Congress, and preparing the ground for full cooperation between the new allies. In November 1917 came the famous ‘Balfour Declaration’, stating the British government favoured a ‘national home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine. Idealism, diplomatic opportunism and strategic calculation all fed into this announcement. Balfour (like Lloyd George) was a Zionist, had long been interested in Jewish culture and religion, and had met and been impressed by Chaim Weizmann. The government was convinced of the importance of winning over Jewish opinion in Germany, the USA and Russia to the allies’ side. Balfour told the Cabinet the declaration implied a British or US protectorate rather than the early creation of a Jewish state, though he personally hoped it would emerge in the long-term. Crucially the declaration contained a provision there should be nothing done ‘which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine’. Towards the end of his life Balfour reflected that ‘what he had been able to do for the Jews had been the thing he looked back upon as the most worth his doing’.26 Perhaps if the Middle East had been populated with millions of Balfours they might have been able to live peacefully with the ambiguities and internal tensions in the 1917 declaration. Balfour and others did not anticipate the future strength of Arab nationalism. Few actions by former prime ministers have cast so long a shadow. Lloyd George took the lead for Britain during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, with Balfour playing a supportive role as his deputy, though after the main treaty with Germany had been signed and the prime minister returned to London, Balfour stayed to negotiate the treaties with Austria, Turkey, Hungary and Bulgaria. Clemenceau, in a shrewd comment on Balfour’s character, once remarked, after listening to a typically lucid summary of an issue, ‘very well – but are you for or against?’ On another occasion he called him ‘a catty old maid’. Balfour was less vindictive towards Germany than many others; he accepted the need for reparations but did not want to ‘trample her in the mud’. An adviser to President Wilson thought he was ‘the arch conspirator’ against the president’s idealism, representing ‘the philosophy of doubt’ as opposed to the ‘philosophy of faith’.




Despite the heavy and grinding work, Balfour enjoyed Paris and the social side of the conference; after an American socialite took him off to a nightclub for the first time in his life, he courteously thanked her for ‘the most delightful and degrading evening I have ever spent’.27 In October 1919 Balfour – now 71, and exhausted after five years of major departmental office – swapped posts with Curzon and became Lord President of the Council. He refused a peerage and the suggestion he also become Leader of the House of Lords. He was a ‘natural’ for the nondepartmental minister/elder statesman/eminence grise role. In the Cabinet he ‘rarely spoke’ but when he intervened, noted one minister, his words ‘carried immense weight’.28 He was busy on Cabinet committees, going back onto the Committee of Imperial Defence when it was reconstituted and chairing its important Standing Sub-Committee; he was a member of the Irish Situation Committee and involved in the secret talks in 1921 with de Valera (Balfour realistically accepted that the union was finished and acquiesced in the deal made with the separatists); and he chaired a new Committee on the Coordination of Scientific Research. Representing Britain on the Council of the League of Nations, he led the British delegation to Geneva and the League Assembly each autumn 1920–22. He had few illusions about the potential of the League without American involvement and did not share internationalists’ idealism about the ‘new diplomacy’, but he did his best to make it a useful and workable body and was a dominant figure at the Assembly. From November 1921 to February 1922 he put on a brilliant performance leading the British delegation to the Washington Naval Conference, negotiating a naval limitation agreement with the US, Japan (a major beneficiary in the Pacific, with ultimately deadly consequences), France and Italy, recognising that the era of British naval supremacy was over but achieving parity between the British and US fleets. He was hailed as a national hero on his return to Britain, and was met at Waterloo station by the prime minister and the Cabinet and by cheering crowds. Apart from the Order of Merit (in 1916) he had always refused all offers of honours, but now became a Knight of the Garter and (with some reluctance) accepted an Earldom in May 1922. He recognised it was a way of extending his political life but it took him a while to get used to his new environment: ‘It’s like talking to a lot of tombstones’, he complained, but he soon considered being out of the Commons a ‘blessing’.29 With the coalition coming under increasing strain his success at Washington had led to some speculation in Conservative political circles as to whether he would form a government and Lloyd George himself mused that if Balfour did want to become PM he might support him. But a return to Number 10 was the last thing on Balfour’s mind: he no longer considered himself ‘a political combatant in the firing line’ and continued to stick to Lloyd George and to the coalition.30



116 After Number 10

Standing in for the sick Curzon at the Foreign Office in the summer of 1922, he issued the famous ‘Balfour Note’ advocating the cancellation of all war debts, but stating, failing that, Britain would collect from its own debtors only the amount she needed to pay its debts to the United States. Germany welcomed this proposal, but it nose-dived after meeting with hostile responses in the USA, France and the City. Balfour left office with Lloyd George when the Conservative Party pulled out of the coalition in October 1922. ‘I say, fight them, fight them, fight them! This thing is wrong’, he shouted, pounding the table at a meeting of Lloyd George’s supporters. ‘This is a revolt and it should be crushed.’ As in the years of his own leadership he seemed both ignorant of party feeling and condescending towards the party: ‘it was an advantage to have a leader who was not intellectually much superior to the rest of the party he led’, he remarked about Bonar Law, who now became Tory leader and prime minister.31 For the next two and a half years Balfour was out of government, though he remained British representative at the League of Nations until quitting that post in February 1923, citing age, deafness, fatigue and the need for the job to be done by a Cabinet minister. If this statement was a hint he would be prepared to return to the fold, Bonar Law did not (or did not yet feel able to) take it. He continued to take part in the work of the Committee of Imperial Defence, chairing a special sub-committee in 1923 on relations between the navy and the air force, though a bout of illness (phlebitis) somewhat limited his role. A year later, in July 1924, Balfour was one of four ex-prime ministers – the others being Asquith, Lloyd George and Baldwin – consulted by Labour prime minister Ramsay MacDonald at a special CID meeting on a Channel Tunnel; Balfour opposed the idea. When Bonar Law was forced to resign through illness, Balfour was one of those consulted by George V, recommending Baldwin (whom he did not know well) over Curzon (whom he knew only too well), using the argument it was now impossible to have a prime minister in the Lords. ‘Will dear George [Curzon] be chosen?’ he was asked when he got back from the Palace. ‘No’, he replied, ‘dear George will not.’32 In April 1925 Balfour joined Baldwin’s government, returning to his old role of Lord President. He had thought Baldwin’s decision to call a snap election in December 1923 – which resulted in a hung parliament and a minority Labour government – was idiotic, and was on the edges of Tory plotting to unseat him, before deciding that in the end it was best for Baldwin to continue as party leader. Balfour would have preferred some sort of Conservative/Liberal joint arrangement, or even a Liberal government put in with Tory support, to the ‘national disaster’ of a socialist government. He joined the Shadow Cabinet but when Baldwin returned to power in November 1924 the prime minister did not at first include him in the Cabinet (but he did put him back on the CID). Hankey, the Cabinet Secretary, thought it was because he felt a sense of ‘gaucherie and




inferiority’ in Balfour’s presence. (Balfour having that effect on many people, Roy Jenkins once noted.) Baldwin had been a Cambridge undergraduate when Balfour had achieved his first Cabinet appointment in 1886. Balfour had had a good innings and probably did not expect a return to office. But when Curzon (11 years younger than Balfour) died, Baldwin felt secure enough to recall him to fill the Cabinet vacancy. Balfour was always rather ‘mystified’ by Baldwin, as Blanche Dugdale noted. But he came to feel he was a political ‘genius’ who always ‘managed to say and do the right thing at the right moment’.33 Balfour was selective in his interventions. He was active on the Committee of Imperial Defence, supporting the Admiralty against the Treasury over cuts in naval spending, arguing successfully against Churchill’s proposal in 1926 for a Ministry of Defence to coordinate the armed services, but losing out in 1928 when he condemned as ‘dangerous’ and ‘wholly impracticable’ Churchill’s move (as an economy-seeking Chancellor) to put the ‘Ten Year Rule’ (under which defence planning operated on the assumption there would be no major war within the next decade) on a rolling self-renewing basis.34 He continued to take a great interest in government encouragement of science, technology and research. As Lord President he was responsible for the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and the Medical Research Council (he wore two hats here, as he had become chairman of the MRC in 1924 and retained that post). Although the idea was not original, he pressed strongly for the creation in 1925 of the Committee of Civil Research to investigate, research and advise upon economic and industrial questions, in much the same way as the CID advised the Cabinet on defence matters. Balfour chaired some meetings of the CCR, and Baldwin was sometimes in the chair. It was an imaginative idea but within a couple of years the committee’s presence and impact had faded and its last meeting was held in April 1928. Balfour’s last main achievement came at the 1926 Imperial Conference, where he chaired the Committee on Inter-Imperial Relations and, through some deft negotiation and wordsmanship, came up with a new formula to express and govern relations between the Dominions and Britain, later embodied in the 1931 Statue of Westminster. A.J.P. Taylor called this Balfour’s ‘last and most successful jugglery with high-sounding words’. But while recognising realities and the need to acknowledge the equal status of the self-governing (and white) Dominions of the Commonwealth, Balfour hoped that on defence and foreign policy issues they would still follow Britain’s lead.35 Balfour had aged well. In 1922 he saw a doctor who had examined him during his premiership and was told he was healthier now than 20 years earlier. Increasing deafness was a problem, but he was otherwise vigorous, still playing tennis into his late-seventies, still writing and lecturing on



118 After Number 10

philosophical and other subjects. Although Balfour never really faced up to it, money was starting to become a big problem. Heading a large extended family, he had always spent generously. But careless management and bungled speculative investments had drained away his substantial inherited fortune (he had been one of the richest young men in the country when he came of age in 1869, worth over £1 million). He and his brother lost massive amounts (the equivalent of millions of pounds in today’s money) investing in various companies trying to produce cheap fuel from processed peat. Balfour’s last years were ‘be-devilled by worries about money’.36 By the 1920s he was having overdraft problems and he started his memoirs in 1928 with an eye on much-needed royalties. When he died he left little more than his title and a pile of debts. Towards the end of 1927 and the beginning of 1928, Balfour’s health started to break down. His circulatory system began to fail, not because of disease but simply from ‘wear’, according to his doctor,37 and in March 1928 he had a mild stroke. He began writing his autobiography, the work largely pulled together by his niece Blanche Dugdale who noticed he did not seem particularly interested in the past,38 but illness prevented him completing more than the brief and bland fragment published after his death. In July 1928 both Houses of Parliament presented Balfour with a Rolls-Royce motorcar as an eightieth birthday present (funds raised by a collection). By the autumn of 1928 his deteriorating condition led his doctors to forbid him from attending further meetings of the Cabinet or the Lords. He offered his resignation but Baldwin refused. Balfour’s long official life came formally to an end in June 1929 when the Conservative government was defeated and left office. He spent the last 15 months of his life at his brother Gerald’s home, Fisher’s Hill in Surrey, dying there (aged 81) on 19 March 1930. A Westminster Abbey funeral and burial were offered but in accordance with his own wishes Balfour was buried in the family plot at Whittingehame. Balfour held Cabinet rank for 27 years – longer than Churchill, Lord Liverpool, Gladstone, Palmerston and William Pitt. Their premierships had been longer and more successful than his, and they were more effective leaders. But his achievement lay more in coming back ‘from the political dead’ after leaving Number 10, and in his durability, prestige and constructive record as a former prime minister.39 Balfour was better as an ex-prime minister than as prime minister.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman (resigned 5 April 1908) Campbell-Bannerman had the shortest post-premiership of any former prime minister, one of only 17 days, before he died aged 71, on 22 April 1908. He is sometimes described as ‘the last prime minister “to die on the premises”’,40 but he is in fact the only prime minister (or, more strictly, former prime




minister) to die in Number 10 itself. None of the PMs who died while still holding that post died in Downing Street, but at other locations. It was simply out of the question for the dying C.B., as he was universally known, to be moved from Number 10 after Asquith took over. Campbell-Bannerman’s premiership lasted only 28 months (December 1905–April 1908). He was in many ways an unlikely and under-estimated prime minister: laid-back, if not actually lazy, genial, unflashy, and a poor debater, but also canny, emollient, sensible, determined, and surprisingly radical. He held together a fissiparous party and, if significant reforms were few, at least the foundations for the Liberal government’s later achievements were laid during his term.41 C.B. was 69 and in pretty poor health when he became prime minister. (Only Palmerston, aged 71 in 1855, was an older first-time prime minister.) In the 1890s he had wanted to become Speaker, thinking his health was no longer up to the demands of senior government office. When he became PM, his doctor wanted him to go to the Lords because of the dangers of overwork and excessive strain as a PM in the Commons, but C.B. refused. His wife, Charlotte, was an invalid who suffered from chronic ill-health (diabetes, for which there was then no treatment). When she fell dangerously ill in 1906, dying at the end of August, she would not be nursed by anyone except her husband, which brought C.B. to the point of complete physical and emotional collapse. He never really recovered from this blow.42 In October 1906 he had the first in a series of heart attacks that progressively weakened him over the next year or so (there were further heart attacks in June and November 1907, and February 1908). Only in November 1907 did the press and public learn about his collapsing health, though ‘insiders’ and close aides had been increasingly worried about it for some time. After six weeks convalescence in Biarritz (from late-November 1907 to mid-January 1908), C.B. returned to the fray in seemingly reasonable shape. His political position and authority in the Cabinet, in parliament and in his party were as strong as ever. But after another serious heart attack on 12 February 1908 he never again left his room in Number 10. For a while it seemed possible C.B. might again pull round and the idea of him going to the Lords was again raised, only to be dismissed – it would be a ‘humiliation’, he declared.43 Asquith, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the crown prince, chaired the Cabinet and filled in for the absent and ailing PM. But it soon became obvious C.B. was dying. He may have wanted to die still ‘in harness’, and King Edward VII ungenerously did not want to have his holiday in Biarritz interrupted by a prime-ministerial resignation and a handover of power. It became clear by late-March that the uncertainty could not continue and in early April C.B. wrote to the King to resign. He was fading rapidly and barely three weeks later died.



120 After Number 10


Asquith’s fall from power in 1916 was sudden, dramatic and final. He had been Liberal leader and prime minister for over eight and a half years and Chancellor for over two years before that. Although he had grumbled about feeling ‘like a rat in a trap’ and being ‘heartily sick of it … eleven years with no spell off was too much’,44 he did not want to give up office and resented being forced out in a ‘palace revolution’. He had not seen the coup coming, was outmanoeuvred during the leadership crisis and played his cards badly. Asquith had long been ‘the indispensable man’ and a successful peace-time prime minister, but it had become increasingly obvious he could not meet the need for more resolute and determined leadership in conditions of total war. Faced with a choice between continuing as a mere figurehead prime minister while Lloyd George effectively dominated and ran the war through a powerful new War Committee, or serving in a ‘secondary position’ under another PM (Balfour or Bonar Law were mooted as potential new leaders of the coalition, as well as Lloyd George), Asquith preferred to resign.45 He never forgave Lloyd George, his supplanter, for undermining him and for what he saw as a stab in the back. In the years ahead he often seemed to be dressing up personal pique as political principle.46 When the economist J.M. Keynes had dinner with the Asquiths a few days after the resignation, he found the former prime minister cool, detached and apparently unmoved, but his wife, the volatile Margot Asquith, was crying into her soup in rage and grief. They had some problems in adjusting to life out of Number 10: they had nowhere to live as their old house had been let out and a friend had to put them up for a while until they could move back into it; money was tight with the loss of the prime-ministerial salary as they had no savings but still maintained a substantial domestic staff and a free-spending life-style; and Asquith himself, 64 when he left office, sometimes just stagnated and slumped into an easy life with his books, his family and the social round. (‘We mean to live very quietly’, Margot had explained, ‘only seeing the King and a few friends.’) There was the worry of having family members on active service: one of his sons had been killed in September 1916, another was seriously wounded in December 1917.47 Asquith struggled to find a political role. He did not take a peerage and declined the Garter, thus signalling he did not intend to retire but to stay in frontline politics. He remained leader of the Liberal Party but found being the leading opposition figure in wartime awkward, unwelcome and constraining. ‘He did not’, noted Jenkins, ‘cause Lloyd George a tenth of the trouble that Lloyd George, outside, would have caused him.’ Many of the senior Liberals had followed him rather than serve under Lloyd George, but he did not want to widen the rift in the party ranks, and temperamentally



Herbert Henry Asquith (resigned 5 December 1916)

was always basically a ministerialist and not a man for to-the-sword opposition, which he felt would be inappropriate. He did not want to do anything that might look like threatening national unity. But those behind him found the absence of a strong lead frustrating. He kept up only ‘a moderate level of political activity’, speaking now and then in parliament and in the country, and coming out in favour of votes for women (which he had opposed before 1914), proportional representation and a League of Nations.48 This stance was never going to cause Lloyd George any sleepless nights. On a number of occasions (May 1917; May, September and November 1918) Lloyd George tried to lure Asquith back into government, despite some doubts in his close circle (‘it would be fatal to take Asquith back in any position’, thought Frances Stevenson) and Lloyd George’s own sense that Asquith was ‘sterile’ when it came to policy ideas. Various posts were dangled in front of him – Foreign Secretary, Chancellor, Lord Chancellor (with a tempting £10,000 salary and a £5,000 pension) – but Asquith turned them all down. He told one intermediary that under no conditions would he serve in a government under Lloyd George, whom he mistrusted profoundly and who had ‘incurable defects, both of intellect and character’.49 At the end of the war Asquith indicated he would like to serve on the British delegation to the peace conference but met with a veto from Lloyd George. On the only occasion when Asquith tried to turn the heat up on Lloyd George during the war it backfired on him. In May 1918 he led calls for a select committee to inquire into whether Lloyd George had misled parliament about troop levels available to the generals on the western front. Lloyd George responded with an impassioned fighting speech, while Asquith underwhelmed with his. Asquith’s motion was then defeated by 108 votes to 295 (71 Liberal MPs voting with the government). The vote underlined the party split and was later regarded as a loyalty test by Lloyd George, distinguishing those Liberals who would be on the coalition ticket in the November 1918 general election (given what Asquith mocked as a ‘coupon’) from others who would face Conservative challengers. The 1918 election was a disaster for Asquith. The Liberal machine had been neglected during the war. He had little in the way of a positive programme to offer and largely ended up simply warning against giving Lloyd George a ‘blank cheque’. His heart was not in it and he expected to lose, but the outcome was worse than he had thought likely. The coalition swept the board with 478 seats (including 133 Lloyd George Liberals) while Asquith’s Liberals won only 28 being overtaken by Labour with 57. Even more humiliatingly, Asquith himself lost badly in the East Fife seat he had held for 32 years. It might have been a good moment to bow out quietly. But with no obvious successor Asquith chose to soldier on as Liberal leader (Sir Donald



122 After Number 10

Maclean was made acting chairman of the beleaguered Asquithites in the Commons until their chief could find another seat). He was described at this time as ‘stoical to the point of indifference’ and was really in a sort of political limbo. In the first half of 1919 he received not one invitation to speak from any Liberal association in the country.50 Taking on the job that year of chairing a Royal Commission on Oxford and Cambridge universities was hardly the sort of assignment to bring him back to the centre of the political stage. In February 1920 Asquith returned to parliament through a by-election in Paisley. His fastidious and ambiguous attitude towards taking up the political cudgel again came out in private comments about not ‘look[ing] forward to the adventure, which however has to be faced’ and not being ‘very fond of going back to Scotland’. However, he campaigned strongly against the government, criticising it over the Versailles Treaty and punitive German reparations (not a ‘clean peace’), and on Ireland (where his call for dominion status was denounced as ‘lunacy’ by Lloyd George but later more or less accepted in the 1921 treaty).51 Cheering crowds accompanied Asquith back to the Palace of Westminster but he met with a frigid reception in the Commons and it was all soon downhill again. The odds were stacked against a great political come back. He was the leader of a small and unhappy parliamentary force. His own political position was ambiguous, as he was rightly seen as a ‘whiggish’ figure but was the leader of the more radical part of the divided Liberal Party. Lloyd George’s supporters were soon gloating that Asquith was ‘finished … he has no fight left in him’, while his own followers complained about ‘leaders who refused to lead’. Graham Stewart has put his finger on ‘Asquith’s inability to inject new thinking into Liberalism. He offered nothing to suggest he had adjusted to a changed environment, but nor would he step aside for someone who might carry forward the party into the post-war world.’ ‘Asquith cuts no ice’, protested his old ally Edward Grey. ‘He is using the machine of a great political brain to re-arrange old ideas.’ Attempts he pursued for a while in 1921 to create a new centre-left group, bringing together Liberals, ‘moderate Labour’ and even some Tories, did not get far. ‘Asquith devoted to bridge and small talk, doing no real work, and leaving the party leaderless’, was one insider’s impression. ‘They all want him to go’, it was said, but could not see how to shift him. ‘It was extremely difficult’, another Liberal said, ‘to dispossess an ex-Prime Minister from the leadership of a party except w[ith] his own good-will which at present appeared in A.’s case to be not forthcoming.’52 Like a general fighting the wrong battle Asquith took pleasure from the fact that in the 1922 general election his wing of the Liberal Party did slightly better (winning 60 seats) than Lloyd George’s (53 seats), though more significant was that Labour’s advance continued (to 142 seats, though only marginally ahead of the Liberals in vote-share). In 1923 the two




Liberal factions were brought together by Baldwin’s move towards protection but the unity was superficial and half-hearted. Asquith remained formally party leader but Lloyd George controlled substantial independent funds and provided the real dynamism and ideas. Tensions and bitter mistrust continued. After the December 1923 election the Conservatives had 258 seats, the Liberals 158 and Labour 191. Asquith was the ‘kingmaker’, 53 rejecting the idea of a coalition and opting to put in a minority and inexperienced Labour government which he judged would not last long and the failure of which would he hoped benefit the Liberals. It was a major miscalculation, for when Labour fell from office in October 1924 and another general election was held, which the Conservatives won, the real casualties were the Liberals, whose vote share fell from 29 per cent to 17 per cent and who lost three-quarters of their seats, being reduced to 40 MPs. Asquith was again unhorsed, losing Paisley. Again unable and unwilling to see it was all up, he accepted a peerage (becoming the Earl of Oxford and Asquith) and the Garter, but remained overall party leader, while Lloyd George led in the Commons. This arrangement was unstable, and an uneasy partnership that could never last long. Things came to a head in May 1926 when they fell out over how to respond to the General Strike (Asquith backing the government). The next month Asquith, now 74, had a stroke and was incapacitated for three months, after which he resigned the leadership in October 1926. His postpremiership had been a painful and protracted anti-climax and political decline: ‘he had stayed too long in an impossible situation’, Jenkins concluded, his reasons for hanging on largely negative, and offering the declining Liberal Party little that was positive.54 Outside politics, Asquith’s experience as an ex-prime minister was not rewarding. He told a parliamentary committee that premiers were underpaid and he had left office ‘much poorer’ than when he entered it, though he said he was not in favour of pensions for prime ministers. Privately, the Asquiths did think the country ought to provide for them in some way, looking enviously at the big lump sums given to many of the top generals after the war.55 Money seemed to run through the Asquiths’ fingers and they were forced to move from their large house in Cavendish Square to a more modest address in Bedford Square. Asquith’s financial position became so bad that some of his friends organised an appeal through The Times for a fund to pay his debts and give him a private pension for the last few years of his life; he left only £9,345 on his death (about £300,000 in today’s money). He wrote several impersonal and unrevealing volumes of reminiscences and memoirs, which did not sell as well as Margot Asquith’s more colourful and indiscreet autobiography and other writings. The problem was ‘he had no desire to tell the world what really happened’, as Roy Jenkins noted, ‘and he was insufficiently interested in himself.’ He did not enjoy the



124 After Number 10

House of Lords, thinking that the quality of speaking and debating there was ‘deplorably low’. 56 Six previous prime ministers had been Chancellors of Oxford University, but when Asquith ran for the post in 1925 the university electorate chose to snub one of the most distinguished living Oxonians. Asquith was a fairly heavy drinker for the last ten to 15 years of his life, but he experienced good general health until the last two years before the end when it deteriorated rapidly and he had several strokes and suffered from hardening of the arteries, making him sometimes confused, before he died, aged 75, on 15 February 1928.57




6

David Lloyd George (resigned 19 October 1922) We are now familiar with the televised exit from Number 10 of the resigning or defeated prime minister – the brief farewell remarks, the posing in front of the cameras with spouse and family, and the brave waves before the official car speeds them out of Downing Street for the last time. Lloyd George’s fall and exit from power in October 1922 was the first to be captured on film in this way. A short silent newsreel film shows Conservative MPs spilling out of the Carlton Club meeting after the dramatic party debate and vote there which triggered his resignation, there is stilted footage of other top politicians of the time and the King, and – with the caption ‘I am no longer Prime Minister’ – a top-hatted and smartly-dressed Lloyd George, with his wife and daughter, stepping out of Number 10, being saluted by the police constable on duty, and pausing for the cameramen. The film ends with a caption ‘In the Wilderness but with one faithful friend at least’, showing a relaxed former prime minister, in the country with his dog, about to go for a walk.1 The precise timing and the way in which Lloyd George was overthrown may have been unexpected, but the insecurity of his position, the decay of his political authority, the growing strength of his enemies, and the unravelling of his coalition had been apparent for some time. He may well have ‘retained wide public support to the end’, as Kenneth O. Morgan argues,2 but strains and unrest within the ranks of the Conservative Party in parliament were crucial in bringing down a prime minister who had no secure party base of his own in Westminster and Whitehall. Lloyd George had probably seen it coming, particularly after the failure of his efforts in 1920–21 to realign the party system and create a new Centre Party around himself. By 1922 he was tired after six years as prime minister and after having been in ministerial harness for nearly 17 consecutive years, including four years of war. He had talked privately of his desire to retire, to allow a Conservative to lead the coalition, to have some 126



Lloyd George to Chamberlain

rest and to ‘write his book’. In the summer of 1922, when the press baron Lord Northcliffe became insane and died, Lloyd George wondered whether a group of his rich friends should buy The Times so he could then retire as prime minister and become the newspaper’s editor. Even while still prime minister he had begun to prepare for life after Number 10. He bought some land and built a new house for himself at Churt in Surrey, where he planned to farm. He signed a contract and started to write his war memoirs (he showed 15,000 words to a friend) but the announcement (in August 1922) that his publishers were paying him the-then all-time record sum of £90,000 provoked such a storm of controversy he felt compelled to say that all profits would go to war charities before deciding to drop the project and (after acrimonious exchanges and legal threats) repay the advance he had been given. Like other long-serving prime ministers, however, he could not bring himself voluntarily to give up office and power. He had to be pushed out by his erstwhile Conservative supporters who decided they no longer needed him and would be better off without him.3 Within a few hours of the Carlton Club meeting on 19 October 1922, Lloyd George had seen the King and submitted his resignation as prime minister. He stayed in Number 10 for a few more days, while his successor Bonar Law was formally elected Conservative leader, and moved out on 23 October. He was not downcast – in fact the reverse. ‘Rhyddid!’ (Welsh for ‘Freedom!’), he declared to one adviser, and other Number 10 and civilservice staff reported him to be cheerful, light-hearted, joking, relieved the end had finally come, and showing no signs of regret at leaving office. No one believed, when the famous front door closed after him, that he would be out forever. The King, political allies and enemies, advisers, friends and family members, and Lloyd George himself – all expected he would return to power, and soon. One of Lloyd George’s private secretaries, Sir Edward Grigg, loaned him his house in Westminster as a temporary London base, but Dame Margaret Lloyd George seemed to think it would not be too long before they were back living in Number 10 (later, they had houses in Chelsea and then Kensington).4 Lloyd George was only 59 years old, world famous, and still at the height of his powers. No one suspected that, in the 22 more years he would live, he would never be in government again. Lloyd George had a complicated and tangled private life, and he set up an extraordinary arrangement after leaving the premiership. He has been described as a ‘serial adulterer’ and was effectively (if not in the strict legal sense) bigamous. His wife, Dame Margaret, preferred to live mainly in North Wales, in Criccieth, where she was a well-known public figure and did much work representing Lloyd George in his Caernarvon constituency, which he now seldom visited. The house at Churt (Bron-y-de) was largely the domain of his secretary-mistress, Frances Stevenson. She became legally his second wife in 1943, when he was 80 years old and she was 55, but the two had been in what was virtually a parallel marriage for 30 years before



Lloyd George to Chamberlain 127

then. This relationship was kept secret from the public and out of the newspapers but produced considerable tension in the Lloyd George family circle. In 1929 Frances Stevenson gave birth to a daughter, though she was presented to the world as an adopted child. While it is not certain Lloyd George was the girl’s father (Miss Stevenson had also been having an affair with Thomas Tweed, a Lloyd George aide and Liberal Party organiser), he doted on her, took a great deal of interest in her upbringing and allowed her to call him ‘Taid’ (the Welsh for ‘grandfather’). In his own self-centred way Lloyd George loved and needed both women. But he was not faithful to either of them – a notorious womaniser, there were many stories of him chasing after young secretaries, maids, and farm girls long into old age. In scenes straight from an Alan Ayckbourn play, a French farce or a soap opera, Lloyd George’s daily life and holiday arrangements after he left Number 10 often involved frantic comings and goings, with one ‘wife’ coming in at the frontdoor while the other left by the backdoor.5 There are many photographs of the ex-prime minister walking the grounds, tending his fruit trees and inspecting his pigs on his farm in the 1920s and 1930s. After leaving office he preferred to live mostly at Churt with Frances Stevenson. He eventually built up an estate of about 750 acres, pouring a large amount of money into reclaiming, irrigating and cultivating poor land, running a poultry farm, keeping bees and selling honey, opening a farm shop. He was particularly successful with his orchards and fruit, winning prizes and developing a new strain of raspberry that was named after him. He was an interfering employer, and his farm managers often did not last long, some complaining it was run more as a ‘hobby’ than a proper ‘business’.6 Lloyd George left public life substantially wealthier than when he entered it. He had after 1922 an expensive and affluent lifestyle, with his estate, a large personal staff of secretaries, researchers and assistants, and a liking for long foreign holidays. He turned down offers of City directorships, however. He received an annuity of £2,000 a year from the American tycoon Andrew Carnegie and made serious money from his writing and journalism, being paid £1 per word by the Hearst Press of America for thousandword articles on contemporary political and international issues which were given world syndication. He has been described as ‘the highest paid political journalist of his time’, and one estimate is he made £30,000 in this way in his first year out of office (equivalent to nearly a million pounds today). He once admitted that in his first four years out of office his journalistic income was ‘much greater’ than the aggregate of his ministerial salaries during 17 years in government. In the five years from 1937 he made a total of £43,000 from his journalism. The advances, royalties and newspaper-serialisation earnings from his War Memoirs in the 1930s added up to something like £65,000 (equivalent to £2.4 million today). Lloyd George was not personally corrupt but he realised and exploited the fact



128 After Number 10

that, as an ex-prime minister, he was ‘a valuable commercial property’, as Kenneth O. Morgan says. In his first year out of office (1923) he was able to cash in on his reputation as a world statesman in a triumphant five-week lecture tour of America, where he was the most popular and fêted visiting celebrity since Charles Dickens, 80 years previously. He controlled substantial political funds of his own (totalling several million pounds) – controversially built up from honours sales and the purchase and then profitable re-sale of the Daily Chronicle newspaper – used for organisation, campaigning and propaganda, and to support his energetic ideas-mongering (funding teams of advisers and experts).7 Up to 1931 (and to a less extent after that) Lloyd George remained a critical player and at the centre of British politics. He was one of the most creative politicians of the period, brimming with ideas, plans and schemes. Some of his impact was negative, in that he was a bogeyman to his rival political leaders, haunting their minds and their political calculations as they manoeuvred to thwart him and keep him out. Baldwin and MacDonald ‘get on together’, commented one insider in the late 1920s ‘because they both hate and fear [Lloyd George]. He is rarely for long out of their minds.’8 When MacDonald, the Labour leader, stayed at Chequers, the prime minister’s official country residence, he would have Lloyd George’s photograph taken down and put away in a cupboard. Baldwin defaced photographs of him in his private photo album. Lloyd George had a low opinion of them, and there was a strong mutual antipathy towards Neville Chamberlain too. He may have been ‘the man who won the war’, but his political opponents did their best to exploit the problems and broken promises of the years after 1918. Much of the politics of the 1920s were a reaction against Lloyd George – his methods, record, policies and personality. Ideas about new coalitions or alliances, dividing or breaking up the established parties, seemed never far from his thoughts. ‘I am working for a break 2 or 3 years hence after we have formed a Centre Party with a strong progressive bias’, he said soon after losing power. These dreams never materialised, but options were kept open and feelers put out to left and right at various times, hoping to attract moderate Labour and progressive Conservatives, and he sought to exploit whatever opportunities came his way as the tectonic plates of the party system groaned and shifted, with five elections in nine years (1922–31) and two periods of minority Labour government (1924 and 1929–31). The underlying problem was that his political space was more and more squeezed as the Liberals lost out to Labour and the Conservatives and as two-party politics was restored. In the November 1922 election, while the Conservatives won 344 seats and Labour 142, the Liberals were split, with the Asquithites winning 60 seats and Lloyd George coming in fourth, with his followers winning 55 seats. In December 1923 the reunited Liberals made gains, but their 158 seats still put them in third place, while the October 1924 election was a disaster, in which their national




vote fell from 29 per cent to 17 per cent and they were reduced to only 40 seats. The revival in 1929, with 6 per cent more of the vote and 19 more seats (making a total of 59), was the last high point before a complete collapse in 1931. In 1924–29 and even more so after 1931, large government majorities effectively sidelined him. ‘Ideas and experts were not enough’, as Kenneth O. Morgan argued. ‘He needed also supporters, organisation, a party base – above all, public trust. These were assets which Lloyd George, however fertile in ideas and initiatives, conspicuously lacked.’9 Lloyd George had not come to power in 1916 through any sort of ‘normal’ party route and, after 1922, he had little prospect of regaining power that way either. Although he became Liberal Party leader 1926–31, at the same time, as John Campbell points out, he ‘cultivated his Coalition image as a man above party – a de Gaulle figure … the Man of Emergency, to be kept in reserve for the ultimate crisis when his poor successors would be swept away by events’. Such a stance appealed to the instincts of a politician who always had a ‘presidential’ outlook and style and who was not a good team player. It was hard to imagine him as easily fitting into anything but the number one position after having been prime minister: ‘I’ll serve under any man you like’, as he once said, ‘but I pity the man I serve under.’ The trouble was that while the role of a ‘permanent one-man opposition’ played to his strengths and was perhaps the only one circumstances permitted, it was ultimately a cul-de-sac. He thought his independence was an asset, as Campbell notes, but the absence of a strong party base left him isolated, cut off from the real road to power and, eventually, in the wilderness.10 Liberal reunion after 1923 was always rather cosmetic, and Lloyd George’s relations with Asquith, who remained the party leader until October 1926, were edgy and uneasy. There was considerable suspicion towards, and mistrust of, the returning prodigal son, with bitter arguments over the Lloyd George Political Fund. Lloyd George wanted to keep complete control over his political war-chest and kept his own separate headquarters, while the Asquithites and the main party machine badgered him with demands to ‘hand us your dirty money’, as he liked to put it (he did release large sums for electioneering, but never as much as they wanted). When he and Asquith differed over the 1926 General Strike (Asquith condemning it outright; Lloyd George more sympathetic to the unions and calling for a negotiated settlement), the party old guard tried to seize the chance to force him out, but messages of support flooding in showed Lloyd George was more in touch with majority Liberal opinion. Instead Asquith was routed, resigning a few months later. As John Campbell notes, in the 1920s Asquith hung on too long and ‘offered nothing but his past’, while Lloyd George appeared to be the man with the political future, the energy and the ideas. Had Lloyd George won control of the Liberal Party sooner, he might have been better able to rescue its position and restore its fortunes.11



130 After Number 10

‘When Lloyd George came back to the party, ideas came back to the party’, one Liberal politician said. What Lloyd George tried to offer in the 1920s was a non-socialist radical alternative, a politics of creative ideas, attractive to moderate and progressive opinion. ‘This weekend’, he once boasted, ‘I have 14 professors at Churt!’12 Economists (including Keynes), social-policy researchers, and other experts were pulled in to form a ‘brain’s trust’, and a series of policy reviews and plans – given catchy short-hand titles: ‘The Green Book’, ‘The Yellow Book’, ‘The Orange Book’ – spelt out bold and forward-looking proposals for tackling the problems of agriculture, unemployment and industry through public works, state investment, land nationalisation, and economic planning. It added up to something like a British-style ‘New Deal’ programme and testified to the ex-prime minister’s continuing dynamism, radicalism and openness to fresh thinking and new ideas. In his late-sixties and in politics for nearly 40 years (he became Father of the House, the longest-serving MP, in 1929) he had not been fossilised by the experience.13 Younger radicals were enthused while some more right-wing Liberals defected to the Conservatives. But though the headlines were captured, and the contrast with Baldwin’s ‘Safety First’ and MacDonald’s call for ‘no monkeying’ was marked, the electoral rewards (in 1929) were scanty. Lloyd George and the Liberals were on a hiding-to-nothing in helping to prop up a minority Labour government after 1929 but receiving little in return. Divisions within the Liberal Party were deepening while Lloyd George was casting about for some formula to escape from the tightening third-party squeeze they were experiencing. He toyed fruitlessly with the idea of a Centre Party, talking with mavericks like Mosley and Churchill and with dissident young Tories like Macmillan. In February 1931 George Lansbury on his own initiative wrote to Lloyd George urging him to join the Labour Party, suggesting he could become its deputy leader and secure Cabinet seats for other Liberals who went over with him. Lloyd George’s reply that he was more interested in advancing his ideas and causes than in holding office was not convincing. It seems by July 1931 he was closer to regaining office and power than at any other time between 1922 and 1940. The embattled MacDonald, it is suggested, was almost on the brink of bringing Lloyd George and the Liberals into government, with secret talks going on and rumours that Lloyd George would become Leader of the House of Commons and either Chancellor or Foreign Secretary. With cruel bad luck, Lloyd George was knocked out of action at one of the crucial moments in inter-war British politics, falling seriously ill and needing a prostate operation just as the Labour government collapsed in the great political-financial crisis of August 1931 and a ‘National’ Government was formed. Other top Liberals (Samuel and Reading) joined the Cabinet and Lloyd George’s son Gwilym became a junior minister. ‘I may be of some use later’, he told MacDonald on 30 August, and it was assumed he




too would enter the government when fully recovered. But he was against any lasting alliance between the Liberals and the Conservatives (‘If I am to die, I would rather die fighting on the Left’, he declared) and detected a Tory plot to take party advantage of the national emergency in the decision to hold an early election in October 1931, breaking with Samuel and Reading when they went along with it.14 But he was completely and humiliatingly shipwrecked by the ‘National’ government’s landslide election victory. Estranged from the Liberals, he was reduced to heading a small ‘family’ rump of just four MPs, whose other members were his son Gwilym (who resigned from the government), his daughter Megan, and his brother-in-law Goronwy Owen, all representing Welsh constituencies. Nine years after leaving Number 10 he was now almost completely isolated – a ‘statesman without a party’15 – and politically irrelevant. Lloyd George rapidly recovered his health and vigour. Aged 68 at the time of the 1931 crisis, he had generally up till then enjoyed robust good health, though was always a hypochondriac. A doctor who examined him in January 1932 said he was a ‘bloody marvel’, with the heart and blood pressure of a man of 35 and the chest and expansion of a prize fighter. He recognised that there was little point in trying to heckle the ‘National’ government’s steamroller (it had nearly 90 per cent of seats in the Commons and there was unlikely to be another election until 1935). For the next few years he made few appearances and speeches at Westminster, and he largely devoted his energies to his farm and to writing his memoirs. Harold Nicolson suggested he was ‘well out of it for the moment’. ‘No’, replied Lloyd George, ‘one is never well out of it. One is just out of it.’ Nicolson could feel his frustration at being in the wilderness and sensing lost opportunities. Lloyd George, he concluded, was ‘on the surface as hearty and brilliant as ever. But one feels it is an effort’. Frances Stevenson and his family found in the 1930s that as Lloyd George got older, he became more cantankerous, volatile and demanding – more difficult to live with.16 The six fat volumes (totalling one million words) of Lloyd George’s War Memoirs were published between 1933 and 1936 and were followed by two further volumes, The Truth About the Peace Treaties, in 1938. He worked furiously hard at them, while a team of assistants and researchers helped put together an array of material, including private documents, official papers and Cabinet records. The Cabinet Secretary, Sir Maurice Hankey, gave crucial assistance, including access to government files, and made detailed comments and suggestions on drafts. Basil Liddell Hart helped on military aspects. Lloyd George sought to vindicate his record, settle personal scores and refight his battles with the top brass. He was adamant he was not going to spare the ‘skunks’ and the ‘charlatans’. There was a vicious attack on the character and diplomacy of Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary 1906–16 and a thorn in his side during Liberal Party infighting in the 1920s. Haig, Robertson, Jellicoe and other wartime commanders were roundly denounced.



132 After Number 10

(Lloyd George liked to point out Haig’s highly-polished boots in a portrait of the Field-Marshall, quipping, ‘He was brilliant – up to there!’). It was a Lloyd-George-centric account of the war, much like Churchill’s later Second World War memoirs. Margot Asquith reported with delight her mother’s reaction: ‘I always knew that [Lloyd George] had won the war but until I read his Memoirs I did not know that he had won it single-handed.’ Nevertheless they sold well, and while pugnacious, controversial and partisan the volumes were a major contribution to the history of the First World War. There was a contemporary political purpose too, with Lloyd George, as Morgan suggests, ‘implicitly arguing the case for a totally different approach towards Germany and international affairs in the 1930s’. Later on Lloyd George mused about possibly writing a character study of Gladstone or a book on Welsh preachers (he was a connoisseur of sermons) or even a novel; an autobiography which revealed details of his private life was never on the cards.17 If Lloyd George hoped to emulate Gladstone – who had charged back into active politics aged 70 in his Midlothian campaign in 1879, returning to Number 10 and dominating the scene for another 15 years – with his own ‘New Deal’ and ‘Call to Action’ in 1935 (when he was 72), he was to be sorely disappointed. He stumped the country and dominated the media with his ideas for economic reconstruction and public works to cure unemployment (harking back to his 1929 programme), linked to support for the League of Nations, international disarmament and peace. He insisted to his aide A.J. Sylvester that he did not want to go into government but his proposals accepted. He added that if ‘they’ would not do that, ‘I will smash them’. MacDonald and Baldwin toyed with the idea of co-operating with him and even bringing him into the Cabinet, but backed off when they realised the strength of opposition to making a deal with Lloyd George: Neville Chamberlain and other ministers would have resigned, and soundings revealed twothirds of Tory MPs were opposed to bringing their old enemy into the tent. As a diversion the government invited him to meetings of a Cabinet committee set up to examine his plans. When Baldwin succeeded MacDonald as prime minister in June 1935, no place was found for Lloyd George in the reshuffle and his proposals were finally turned down. He responded by creating a nonparty ‘Council of Action for Peace and Reconstruction’, working with the Free Churches to tap non-conformist radicalism, and pouring money into sponsoring candidates in the hope of holding the balance of power after the next election. There was wishful thinking here; even Frances Stevenson thought the Council of Action was ‘the most complete muddle & scarcely anyone believing in it’. When the Conservative-dominated ‘National’ government won another huge majority in the November 1935 general election, the game was up. The Liberals won 21 seats, including Lloyd George and his family group who now rejoined the party. Lloyd George’s last bid for power had ended with a whimper not a bang.18




In September 1936 he made a controversial visit to Germany, meeting Hitler at Berchtesgaden and touring German public-works projects. Unfortunately for the ex-prime minister’s reputation Lloyd George appeared to admire and get on well with the Führer, the two men fascinating and flattering each other. An article he wrote about his visit in the Daily Express was so enthusiastic and uncritical it had to be toned down. Hitler, he gushed, was a great man, doing tremendous things for his country. His qualifying remarks, condemning the suppression of liberty in Germany and the persecution of the Jews, received much less attention. Lloyd George was slow to wake up to the threat posed by Hitler and a resurgent Germany in the 1930s. Although he was hostile towards Mussolini and Franco, and denounced fascist aggression (and the limp reaction of the British government) against Abyssinia and in Spain, he sympathised with German grievances and resentment towards the Versailles settlement and backed frontier concessions and adjustments, arguing problems could be sorted out and that good relations and a peace agreement with Nazi Germany were possible. However, if he had been taken in by Hitler and was an appeaser in 1936 he was certainly not two years later, condemning the Munich settlement and criticising Neville Chamberlain’s government for its failures to rearm and to stand up against the aggression of the dictators. He was a strong supporter of an alliance with Soviet Russia, criticising the March 1939 guarantee to Poland as otherwise a worthless gesture. In the late-1930s Lloyd George was effectively only a part-time politician and elder statesman. His speeches in parliament were infrequent. His close aides detected signs of decline, and he himself was starting to feel he was no longer really up to it. As early as 1934 Frances Stevenson was noting he ‘has got so accustomed to ease and leisure, not to say self-indulgence … that he would find daily application to a job very onerous’. In 1936 he told one assistant he had left behind any idea of engaging in ‘administrative statesmanship’ or of being an ‘executive minister’ again. Such ministers should not be much over 60, and he was now in his seventies, fit only for an advisory role. ‘Fancy having to be in town every day, running a department or in the House’, he said in 1938 – ‘it would kill me’. A.J. Sylvester noted how he put on an act, walking quickly when in parliament to create an impression of energy and vigour. ‘But put him at a difficulty, face him with an important situation and a speech: he funks it.’ It would be wrong to see him as a ‘spent force’, however, as Paul Addison warns. An American emissary found him, in March 1940, to be still ‘alert, mentally very keen, and minutely familiar with every detail of both British domestic affairs and British Foreign Relations’. At the beginning of the Second World War he was virtually the same age Churchill was when he began his second premiership in 1951, and in roughly similar health. He remained inventive and imaginative, and with his great political experience potentially had something to offer.19



134 After Number 10

In 1916 Lloyd George had offered the energy and the will to win the war. But in 1939–40, in his final significant appearance on the political stage, it was different. He seemed pessimistic and defeatist, convinced that Britain could not win the war and defeat Germany by itself, and that it might lose the war. He believed a negotiated compromise peace was possible and would be better than another long and costly war. ‘I want to stop this war, otherwise it will mean the break-up of the Empire’, he told Sylvester in October 1939. Some inside the government, such as Halifax and Butler, shared this stance, which was based on a realistic assessment of Britain’s strength. But Hitler had by then proved his word was worthless and that he would keep a pact only until he was ready to break it. Some saw Lloyd George as a potential British Pétain, though there was an important difference in that Lloyd George envisaged not surrender but negotiations to break a deadlock, from a position of strength after an invasion had been beaten (or called) off.20 He helped to bring Neville Chamberlain down with his last great parliamentary speech in May 1940 – ‘the Prime Minister should give an example of sacrifice … [and] sacrifice the seals of office’. For the final time, it seemed, he was on the brink of a return to office. He might be good for only six hours work a day, it was said, ‘but they would be six hours of pure radium’. One idea was that if he was not capable of running a department, he should become a sort of food or agriculture supremo, chairing a food production council. Churchill appeared to be anxious to have Lloyd George with him and, in discussions in late-May/early June 1940, offered a post in the War Cabinet, but he turned it down: ‘I’m not going in with this gang!’ He was unwilling to serve with Chamberlain, who was still a powerful figure in the government, and was angry the offer had been made conditional on his old enemy’s agreement. He may have felt the call had come too late and doubted his physical capacity and resilience. Perhaps too he doubted whether Churchill would succeed and thought he should hold himself back ‘in reserve’: ‘I shall wait until Winston is bust’. Later, in December 1940, he turned down the offer to become British ambassador to the United States on health grounds; Churchill met him and felt he had aged significantly even in the last few months.21 Lloyd George went into sharp physical and political decline. He was jumpy, terrified of German air-raids, and had a deep and luxurious underground shelter built at Churt in which he would sleep. He insisted on listening to the German radio propaganda broadcasts by ‘Lord Haw Haw’. He rarely went to parliament. In May 1941 he made his last full-blown speech, critical and gloomy, provoking Churchill to resort to a contemptuous put-down, comparing him to Pétain. Lloyd George became bitter about Churchill and his conduct of the war, seeming to take a perverse delight when there were setbacks. He had picked Churchill out of the political gutter and rescued his career in 1917, he told Emanuel Shinwell, a Labour critic of the government,




and now wished he had left him there. In February 1943 he cast his last vote in parliament, voting against the government and with Labour rebels in support of the Beveridge report. He last set foot in parliament to listen to Churchill’s statement on the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944. In January 1941 Dame Margaret Lloyd George died; deep snowdrifts had stopped him reaching her bedside in North Wales. It was a massive blow to him and after it he seemed to age more rapidly and his health began obviously to break down. Two years later, in October 1943 – and in the face of bitter hostility from his daughter Megan in particular – he married Frances Stevenson. In September 1944 they left Churt and moved to a house with some land he had bought just before the war at Llanystumdwy, the small Welsh village where he had been brought up. Shrunken and increasingly frail, he was diagnosed as suffering from cancer, and, perhaps sensing that the end was not far off, was returning to his roots. He was in no fit state to fight another general election, and his Caernarvon seat was no longer looking so safe. Ending his career by going down to election defeat would be humiliating. He wanted to be able to have his voice heard when it came to ending the war and making the peace. He had long held the Lords in contempt and had praised Gladstone, Joe Chamberlain, Bright and Cobden for never making the ‘mistake’ of taking an honour. But on a couple of occasions during the war (in 1942 and 1943) he had talked privately of perhaps taking a peerage. Hints were discreetly dropped with Churchill towards the end of 1944 and, after some last-minute agonising over the decision, Lloyd George accepted a hereditary Earldom, the honour being announced to widespread amazement (and, in some quarters, dismay) on 1 January 1945.22 The new Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor never took his seat in the House of Lords. He was sinking fast and died just over two months after his 82nd birthday on 26 March 1945. The radical outsider did not want the Establishment resting place of Westminster Abbey and had instructed he was to be buried at Llanystumdwy, by the side of the River Dwyfor, his grave marked simply by a great stone.

Andrew Bonar Law (resigned 20 May 1923) Bonar Law’s premiership was the shortest of the 20th century: becoming prime minister on 23 October 1922, he served only 209 days in the office, resigning because of serious ill-health on 20 May 1923. He died only five months later. A modest, unassuming and rather gloomy personality, Law was frequently underestimated – to their cost – by his political opponents and was a tough and highly effective party leader, parliamentary debater and government administrator. If there were no great legislative or policy achievements during his brief time in Number 10, he had had a major impact on British



136 After Number 10

politics over the previous decade, serving as a senior minister 1915–21 and being a key figure in the toppling of Asquith and in making (and later unmaking) Lloyd George prime minister. With his health shattered after six exhausting years in high office, Law had resigned from government and from the Tory leadership in March 1921. Before long he seemed to have recovered but resisted pressure to return to front-line politics and indicated he did not wish to hold office again. Probably expecting to play some sort of elder-statesmen role in the years ahead, the break-up of the Lloyd George coalition and the Carlton Club revolt instead made Law prime minister. Aged 64, he was not sure his health and stamina were up to it, but his doctors told him that he could resume full political activity for perhaps two years. He was privately thinking of holding office for only a year or so. Law was probably already a dying man when he became prime minister. He had trouble with his throat and a weak voice during the November 1922 election campaign – the first symptoms of the disease that killed him a year later. Within a few months his health sharply deteriorated: he seemed tired and worn-out and was unable to speak in parliament or take a real part in Cabinet discussions. At the beginning of May 1923 he was packed off on a Mediterranean cruise to see if his condition would improve, but had to abandon that trip and was diagnosed with inoperable throat cancer (linked, no doubt, to his life-long heavy smoking). Depressed and needing heavy doses of pain-killers, Law gave up office with evident relief. Too ill to attend in person for an audience with the King, Law resigned by letter. Law seems to have expected that Lord Curzon, the more senior and experienced figure, would be preferred ahead of Baldwin as his successor. He thought it was too soon for Baldwin but at the same time he did not want to help the overbearing marquess into Number 10. His illness got him off the hook and he ducked the responsibility of giving advice to the Palace – though others, including some of his aides, who asserted they spoke for him, weighed in. He was surprised and pleased when the prize went to Baldwin. Law left behind him a comfortable majority but he had won the premiership as ‘not Lloyd George’ and bequeathed little in the way of a positive strategy beyond the promise of ‘tranquillity’ and stability. Although he kept his seat in parliament, Law did not attend the Commons and played no further part in politics after he quit office. He had never been able to understand the desire for honours and did not want one himself. No one told Law he was suffering from terminal cancer but he probably soon realised he had not long to live. Supported by his family and close friends (notably Lord Beaverbrook), he spent the few months he had left stoically undergoing unpleasant X-ray treatment in Brighton, playing chess and bridge, managing a few holes of golf on a short visit to France, and – political obsessive to the end – keeping up with the latest political news and gossip. He died




138 After Number 10

at home in London on 30 October 1922. His wish to be buried in Scotland alongside his wife (who had died in 1909) was set aside and he was instead given a state funeral in Westminster Abbey (the ‘Unknown Prime Minister’ buried near the ‘Unknown Soldier’ was Asquith’s cruel comment).23

Ramsay MacDonald headed three governments as prime minister, serving for a total of six years in that office, leading Labour administrations in 1924 and 1929–31 and then breaking with his Labour colleagues to form the ‘National’ government in which he was PM from 1931 to 1935. His historical importance lies at least as much in his role in the creation and development of the Labour Party in which he was a key strategist, orator and ideologue than in what he achieved as a prime minister, when he displayed a lack of clear policy ideas and drive and was hampered by the absence of parliamentary majorities in his two terms as Labour PM and by being, in effect, a prisoner of the overwhelming Conservative majority after 1931.24 MacDonald stayed on as prime minister in the 1930s well beyond the point at which he had become ineffective in the role. He still kept a touch for, and had more influence on, foreign policy than on home affairs. But by 1933–34 he had become ‘a standing embarrassment to the government’ and, in different circumstances, would probably have been pushed into resignation – but he was too useful as a political ‘fig leaf’ and helped to maintain the fiction it was still a ‘National’ rather than a Conservative government.25 Baldwin, the Conservative leader and the government’s number two, felt committed to MacDonald and held back from playing the ‘merciful executioner’.26 For his own part, vanity, a belief in his own indispensability, a sense of duty, and a desolate loneliness made MacDonald unwilling or unable to retire (his wife had died in 1911 – it is possible that had she lived he might have left while he could still enjoy retirement). Moving into his late-sixties, his health, powers and grip were failing. He suffered increasingly from eye problems (undergoing operations for glaucoma), headaches, insomnia, exhaustion and depression; in 1934 he had to take a three-month complete break from work on medical advice. His speeches were now too often embarrassingly windy flops. His memory started to go. As time went on, he became increasingly rambling and incoherent at Cabinet meetings and international conferences. Roy Jenkins brackets him with Gladstone and Churchill as prime ministers ‘upon whom senility began to descend while they were still in office’, though MacDonald was ten or more years younger than them. ‘There can hardly have been a weaker prime minister’, argues Kevin Morgan, ‘nor one held in such little regard by supporters and opponents alike’. Reviled as a ‘traitor’ by his former Labour supporters, he was despised by the Conservatives. When he finally left Number 10, says David Marquand, ‘his reputation was in ruins’.27



James Ramsay Macdonald (resigned 7 June 1935)

By early 1935 even MacDonald could see the writing on the wall as pressure for a change built up within the Conservative Party. His first assumption was he and Baldwin would retire together but Baldwin soon put him right on that and they agreed a timetable for the handover, and that MacDonald would remain in the Cabinet but without portfolio (King George V – always friendly towards MacDonald – wanted him to stay on as Lord President of the Council so he could continue to see him often), and that MacDonald’s son, Malcolm, one of the small band of ‘National Labour’ MPs and a junior minister, should be promoted into the Cabinet. On 7 June 1935 MacDonald resigned as prime minister and swopped offices with Baldwin (‘I die today’ was his first thought on waking that morning, as he recorded in his diary, his feelings after the event a mixture of regret and relief – ‘I kept wondering who I was’ now, he admitted).28 Opting to stay on as Lord President in Baldwin’s Cabinet, 1935–37, was a tragic mistake. Physically and intellectually decrepit (his health continuing to decline), politically isolated and ignored by his Tory colleagues, MacDonald should have retired completely. When he finally went in May 1937, almost no one noticed or cared. MacDonald was unhappy about the Conservatives’ decision for an early election, called for November 1935, and got nowhere when trying to persuade them to give up some more seats for their non-Tory allies. Although offered a safer seat elsewhere, he decided to stand again in his Seaham constituency, losing to Labour’s Emanuel Shinwell, a former protégé, with an above-average swing and by a margin of over 20,000 votes in a bitterlyfought contest. Humiliatingly he had to wait a couple of months before he returned to parliament in a by-election for the Scottish Universities after the Unionist Graduates Association was leaned on to nominate him.29 He now cut a pathetic figure, lingering on in political and official limbo. Marquand describes him as ‘a forlorn and, as time went on, an almost forgotten figure, cruelly aware of his diminishing effectiveness, full of grievances against his colleagues and the world, and with no real influence on events … [He] was more isolated politically than he had ever been. Though he still served on the Committee of Imperial Defence and the Defence Requirements Committee, as well as on a number of less important Cabinet committees, Baldwin rarely consulted him informally, and when he tried to ensure his views were heard in discussion outside the Cabinet he was often snubbed. He scarcely ever appeared at the dispatch box, and the newspapers ceased to pay attention to him. He had no patronage, no future, and hardly any following; when he appeared in the lobbies, he seemed lost and helpless, like a ghost from a vanished era.’ In 1935 he had just enough clout to insist that Jimmy Thomas, one of his oldest friends in politics and one of the few Labour figures who had stuck with him, be kept on as a minister, but watched helplessly as Thomas was thrown to the wolves after a budget leak scandal in 1936. Although ‘bitterly contemptuous’ of the




Labour Party leadership, he still thought of himself as a socialist and felt more and more alienated from his Conservative colleagues over issues like the Spanish civil war (where he was sympathetic to the Republicans).30 Finally leaving office when Baldwin quit as prime minister on 28 May 1937, MacDonald refused all honours. He had turned down the Order of the Thistle in 1935 and now rejected a peerage. ‘Me an Earl? How ridiculous’, he is supposed to have said. In the 1920s he had turned down an offer of £50,000 for his memoirs (there was ‘nothing I shrink from more than making public personal impressions of people’, he said), but in 1936 did contemplate starting to write an autobiography, though he got little further than beginning what he hoped would be the opening chapter.31 Although his wife had a private income and left a trust fund, MacDonald had struggled financially when out of office in the 1920s, making some money (only modest amounts) from journalism and lecturing. Some business admirers gave financial support and left him legacies at that time, and he had been able to buy a substantial house in Hampstead and to indulge his passion for foreign travel. He was comfortably off, but not wealthy; at his death, he left £21,500 (around £800,000 at today’s values). Less than six months after ceasing to be a minister, MacDonald was dead. He spent the summer of 1937 just ‘pottering about’ at his home in Lossiemouth in the north of Scotland. Then, accompanied by one of his daughters, on an ocean liner en route for what was planned as a long holiday in South America, he suddenly died of heart failure, aged 71, on 9 November 1937. After a public funeral in Westminster Abbey, his ashes were buried alongside his wife at Spynie churchyard, near Lossiemouth. MacDonald was ‘always talking of returning to public life in some way when he came back from the cruise’, Stanley Baldwin recalled in February 1938. MacDonald had still not fully realised his ‘powers of control had entirely gone’, he suggested, but he would do so when he ‘came to exert himself’ and would then ‘suffer very much’. ‘It was a mercy that he died when he did’ was Baldwin’s sad conclusion.32

Stanley Baldwin (resigned 28 May 1937) Baldwin was one of the dominant figures in interwar British politics, serving three times as prime minister (1923–24, 1924–29 and 1935–37) for just over seven years in total. In the 14 years he was Conservative Party leader the party won its largest majorities of the 20th century and was out of office for less than three years. When he finally retired, in May 1937, it was said ‘no man has ever left in such a blaze of affection’.33 Yet within three years his reputation plummeted and he faced a tremendous wave of contempt and hatred, vilified as one of the ‘Guilty Men’ whose inadequacies and failures had left the country unprepared for war with Hitler. By the time he died in 1947 he had become a largely forgotten and reclusive figure. Historians



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started properly to reassess his career and give a more positive view of his achievements only 30–40 years after he left the political scene.34 As Lord President of the Council 1931–35 (and also Lord Privy Seal 1932–33), Baldwin had been in effect deputy prime minister in the ‘National’ government, his status symbolised and underlined by his occupancy of 11 Downing Street. Head of the largest party in the coalition, he concentrated in those years largely on party and House of Commons management and on India. It is not clear that he wanted or expected to become PM again. The heir apparent, the powerful and impatient Neville Chamberlain, was ready to take over, and many in the party wanted a change in the leadership. Baldwin thought of retiring but then decided he would take the reins again when MacDonald stepped down. He thought that, health permitting, he would do two or three years at most. He admitted there was a worry about ‘overstaying your utility’, as had MacDonald or Gladstone, but he wanted to hand over to his successor only when the ‘political weather’ was fair, when his own prestige was still high and the party ‘in good heart’.35 Baldwin always lived on his nerves and as prime minister needed country weekends and annual month-long summer holidays in Aix-les-Bains to recharge his batteries. He had turned 68 in 1935, shortly after moving back into Number 10, and by mid-1936 was more than usually tired, battered and depressed. He seems to have had some sort of nervous break-down and needed ten weeks break before returning to his desk in October 1936. He now decided to retire as soon as possible and only the Abdication crisis stopped him going at the end of that year. Baldwin is the only prime minister between Salisbury (in 1902) and Wilson (in 1976) to make an unforced departure from the office at a time of his own choice. But he could see he needed to get out soon and he took the first available opportunity to leave on a high note after his successful handling of the ‘King Edward problem’ and the coronation of the new King George VI, resigning on 28 May 1937, a few months before his 70th birthday.36 Wanting to avoid causing problems for his successor and former colleagues, Baldwin is said to have resolved to ‘make no political speeches, neither to speak to the man at the wheel nor to spit on the deck’. He was made a Knight of the Garter and an Earl but there are suggestions he needed persuading by the King and by his wife, Lucy Baldwin, before agreeing to go to the Lords (at one point he said he did not want to go there unless life peerages were created).37 Baldwin was worn out and suffered a nervous collapse in the first months of his retirement. The infirmities of old age started to trouble him: deafness and arthritis, which stopped the long country walks he had always loved and eventually left him hobbling around with a stick. Left to himself he might have preferred to live mainly in the country with only occasional visits to London, but his wife liked the more active social life of the capital




city and so they kept their main home there in the late 1930s. Money was not a particular problem as shares in the family iron and steel business were doing well and his annual income at this time was £15–20,000 (the equivalent of over £500,000 today), including a £2,000 prime-ministerial pension.38 Until 1940 he remained one of the most respected figures in public life and played an active elder statesman’s role. He was busy on a range of public, non-party-political and philanthropic bodies: he was chancellor of the universities of Cambridge and St Andrews; a governor at Harrow (his old school); a trustee of the Pilgrim Trust; president of the Association for Education in Citizenship and the British Association for International Understanding; chairman of the Imperial Relatives Trust; a trustee of the British Museum; and president of the MCC. In December 1938 a public appeal was launched for the Lord Baldwin Fund for Jewish Refugees, which raised more than half a million pounds in eight months. In 1939 he made trips to Canada and the USA to lecture and broadcast on the English character and values, democracy and citizenship. Behind the scenes, and reflecting his long-time concern firmly to embed the Labour Party into the constitutional system, he held private dinners for the King to meet leading Labour figures. Although there were occasional rumours he might come back into government, Baldwin ‘knew that he could not return: he was neither physically nor mentally able’.39 He kept in touch with opinion in Westminster, Whitehall and party circles. He was not happy, however, with the way things were going under Chamberlain. After Eden resigned as Foreign Secretary in February 1938, Baldwin saw a lot of him and gave him advice on tactics, though Chamberlain was careful to try to keep his predecessor in Number 10 on side. Presciently Baldwin predicted that if war came, the country would want Churchill as leader; Eden’s best chance, he said, was as a peacetime leader. It was not that Baldwin fundamentally questioned Chamberlain’s policies, more that he was critical of his (unBaldwinesque) style and methods, fearing particularly that his highly partisan and confrontational approach towards Labour would jeopardise the broad-based national unity needed to meet the threat from Germany. He hoped Hitler might be turned East and – like Napoleon – break himself against the Russians. He made his one and only House of Lords speech on 4 October 1938, to reassure doubters and give general support to the Munich settlement, saying he could not have gone to Munich himself but praising Chamberlain’s courage in doing so, and arguing that the time bought must be put to good use with crossparty cooperation, industrial mobilisation and more rapid rearmament. In private he was critical of Chamberlain’s ‘peace with honour’ ‘emotional outburst’ in Downing Street – ‘I would have done it very differently’, he sniffed. While Duff Cooper, who resigned from the government over Munich, begged Baldwin (in 1939) to come back into office and lead a coalition government, the first stirrings of the later public and political hostility could



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be seen in the way one peer in the Lords debate on the agreement lashed out about the ex-prime minister’s ‘responsibility for failure to rearm’.40 During the ‘phoney war’ period of 1939–40 he became steadily more disenchanted with Chamberlain and critical of his decisions and inert conduct of the war. In May 1940 he was clear the country and the crisis needed Churchill’s leadership. If, during the last years of peace, Baldwin’s retirement had involved a mixture of ‘disappointment and anti-climax rather than satisfactory afterglow’, as Roy Jenkins put it, that was nothing compared with what was to come during the worst period of the war. He came in for considerable abuse, criticism and scapegoating in and after 1940, being left particularly exposed as a target after Neville Chamberlain’s death. There was hate mail (and he lacked even a secretary to protect him from the abusive letters) and newspapers attacks. Even some of the Baldwins’ local shopkeepers and tradesmen were hostile. ‘It was convenient for many people who had not themselves been conspicuous supporters of rearmament or a strong foreign policy to turn upon the unhappy Baldwin … and put all the blame upon him’, was Harold Macmillan’s verdict. Media and political enemies persecuted him in a damaging row in 1942 over the requisitioning for scrap metal of the wrought iron gates at Astley Hall, his house in Worcestershire – one pair of gates was left, ‘to protect Lord Baldwin from the just indignation of the mob’ jeered one MP. Churchill had to squash talk of Astley itself being requisitioned and the Baldwins turned out of their home (the London house had been given up at the start of the war). G.M. Young wrote that Baldwin was advised or warned to stay away from London because of public hostility (though there is no corroboration for this claim).41 Baldwin was hurt but did his best to be phlegmatic. He did not complain or answer back. He had wanted to be able to do some national work during the war but instead had to accept a sort of internal exile. He declined invitations to broadcast on the BBC, to avoid arousing further controversy. He had a clear conscience about his decisions on rearmament in the 1930s and felt future historians would understand them and their context better than the contemporary mud-slingers (he was, in the end, right). Churchill was polite and gracious, occasionally having him to lunch in Number 10 (though later in the index to his war memoirs there was the notorious entry about Baldwin ‘putting party before country’). The war years were lonely, isolated and bitter for the Baldwins. There were money worries and he had to sell capital to balance his bank account (though at death Baldwin left £280,000 – over £5 million at today’s prices). Astley became rather run down and neglected. There were now few domestic staff and travel was difficult. The shortages, problems and restrictions of their twilight existence hit Lucy Baldwin’s spirits badly. She was his main prop and he was devastated by her sudden death in June 1945.42




Baldwin lingered on for two and a half years after the war, looked after by one of his daughters. He was weary, lame, depressed, less able to concentrate, sunk in on himself. He had become politically irrelevant. He had taken no part in the 1945 general election, and the Conservative Party nationally had pointedly not mentioned him in its campaign. Despite his pre-war electoral appeal and success he had become an electoral liability. Baldwin had always been adamant he would write ‘no memoirs or nonsense of that kind’, believing ‘no man can write the truth about himself’. He distrusted biographers and what he called ‘the Higher Cannibalism’, only reluctantly agreeing that G.M. Young should write an official life to be published after his death – and he was badly served by Young’s inadequate and unsympathetic biography which appeared in 1952.43 Baldwin died in his sleep, aged 80, in December 1947. Unveiling a memorial to him in 1950, Churchill called Baldwin ‘the most formidable politician I have ever known’. But it had all ended badly. Looking forward to life after Number 10, Baldwin, because of the way events turned out and the ‘somersaults of popularity’,44 found it a chastening and dismal experience.

Neville Chamberlain (resigned 10 May 1940) Neville Chamberlain’s physical demise followed soon after his political demise. ‘He fell in May [1940]’, noted his official biographer, ‘in July he was stricken by illness, he died in November.’45 Yet politically and governmentally he played a crucial role in those few months of his postpremiership. Chamberlain waited a long time for the premiership, being 68 when he finally became PM in May 1937. He was a tireless, hard-working, resilient, determined and dominating figure in Number 10. His reputation was high when he took over from Baldwin but, rather than being able to concentrate on domestic reforms, as he had wanted, his premiership was dominated by the looming threat of war. He had always felt himself indispensable, but the failure of his appeasement policy and the outbreak of the second world war called that assumption into question. Nevertheless he did not yield his grip on power easily. Churchill and Eden were brought into his government at the start of the war but the Labour Party refused to join. During the ‘phoney war’ period (September 1939–April 1940) criticism built up of the government’s weaknesses in commitment, competence and drive. Chamberlain recognised he was not cut out to be a war leader, describing his life as wartime PM as ‘one long nightmare’.46 As his limitations in that role were increasingly exposed, support for him was eroded. Tory rebels delivered their own vote of no confidence in the 7–8th May debate on the disastrous Norway campaign, when the government’s majority fell dramatically. To the bitter end Chamberlain had clung on, even trying to use the breaking news of the start of the German offensive in the west on 10 May



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to delay the inevitable.47 Labour delivered the coup-de-grace by making it clear they would enter government only under another prime minister.48 Churchill was not Chamberlain’s first choice as his successor (nor did ruling ‘Establishment’ circles, the Palace, or the bulk of Tory MPs want him). He thought – wrongly – that Labour would not serve under Churchill. But when Lord Halifax, his Foreign Secretary, fellow-appeaser and preferred candidate, refused the fence, Chamberlain had no option but to recommend Churchill to the King. Chamberlain and Churchill had long been political rivals and, in the 1930s, bitter enemies, though they had worked well together and come to respect each other after September 1939. Now, as Graham Stewart puts it, they ‘found circumstances conspiring in the moment of deadly national peril to make them dependent upon one another; Chamberlain could not form a government with cross-party support, and Churchill could not survive as head of that new combination without Chamberlain’s support and the parliamentary majority that rested upon it’. Labour pushed strongly against Chamberlain’s inclusion in the new government but Churchill knew that was politically impossible and all he would do was to abandon his initial plans to make Chamberlain Chancellor of the Exchequer or Leader of the House of Commons and instead appoint him Lord President of the Council with a seat in the five-member War Cabinet. Chamberlain was relieved to be able to avoid ‘much tedious sitting in the House’ and the burden of day-to-day management of parliamentary business.49 Chamberlain has rightly been seen as ‘the key figure’ and as occupying a position of ‘pivotal significance’ in the government.50 Out of a mixture of tact, prudence, magnanimity, respect for his abilities, and hard political calculation, Churchill treated him with great care. ‘Insiders’ noted his ‘courtesy and deference’ towards Chamberlain at Cabinet meetings. He did not evict Chamberlain from Number 10, letting him and his wife continue to live there for another month, until they moved next door to Number 11 Downing Street. Nor did he try to evict Chamberlain from the leadership of the Conservative Party or to seize control of the party machinery. Churchill and Chamberlain both knew the latter’s political position remained strong and that only if he remained party leader could the support of the Conservative Party in parliament be swung behind the new PM – a figure regarded with resentment and suspicion by the bulk of Tory MPs. Conservative backbenchers cheered wildly when Chamberlain entered the chamber of the House of Commons on 13 May 1940 but greeted Churchill with sullen silence. Twothirds of Chamberlain’s old ministers stayed on in the new government and relatively few die-hard anti-Chamberlainites benefitted from Churchill’s patronage or received senior posts. ‘To a very large extent I am in your hands’, Churchill told Chamberlain.51 The displaced former prime minister responded with loyalty, swallowing his distaste for some of Churchill’s methods and his cronies, and he did not




plot or intrigue against the usurper. Other Tories did: junior Foreign Office minister R.A. Butler and other Chamberlain loyalists met to drink a champagne toast to ‘the king over the water’ and looked forward to the return of their old master; within days of Churchill’s accession, the chairman of the 1922 Committee was saying that three-quarters of Tory MPs were ‘ready to put Chamberlain back’. Chamberlain assured the party’s National Union Executive that relations with Churchill were ‘cordial’ and there were no differences of policy between them. Concerned that the all-too conspicuous absence of vocal and whole-hearted Tory support for Churchill might be giving out the wrong signals about the government’s strength and resolve, particularly to the USA, he operated behind the scenes through the whips, still largely a Chamberlainite stronghold, to ensure the PM started (in early July 1940) to receive a chorus of Tory cheers in parliament. But Tory doubts about Churchill remained and, according to Andrew Roberts, a sort of ‘undeclared guerrilla war’ between Churchill and the Chamberlainites in the party continued for some time, even after Chamberlain himself left the scene, Churchill’s political position in the party only being finally safe from the summer of 1941.52 Chamberlain’s relationship to Churchill was in marked and positive contrast to that of Asquith to Lloyd George in 1916, which Churchill acknowledged with gratitude. It contrasted to the damaging divisions, mistrust and infighting in the French government in 1940 between Paul Reynaud and the former-prime minister Edouard Daladier. By working to shore up Churchill’s position and by playing a constructive role in the new government Chamberlain performed a great national service, helping to promote and sustain political unity at a time of military disaster and when a Nazi invasion of Britain seemed imminent.53 ‘All my world has tumbled to bits in a moment’, Chamberlain admitted after his overthrow, and although he was relieved to be free of the ‘agony of mind’ associated with supreme war leadership, he described himself as ‘numbed’ at the sudden change. ‘There is no pleasure in life’, he said, ‘and no prospect of any’, only ‘chronic misery’ and ‘harrowing anxieties’. He had done what he thought right and never wavered in his belief that his combination of appeasement and rearmament was the correct policy. But he was bitter, humiliated and resentful. He was 71 and, though he did not yet know it, probably already fatally ill. He grimly set to and threw himself into his new duties, but close observers noted his ‘ghastly’ appearance, calling him ‘a heartbroken and physically broken man’, someone whose days were numbered.54 The Lord President’s job in wartime was no sinecure: Chamberlain carried a heavy load. He chaired the War Cabinet when Churchill was away or out of the country (‘Neville, please mind the shop!’ Churchill would cry). He was in effect Churchill’s deputy (the Labour leader Attlee being formall y appointed Deputy Prime Minister only in 1942). Churchill looked



146 After Number 10

to him to run the ‘home front’ while he concentrated on running the war. Through the Lord President’s Committee his role was to coordinate, pull together the threads and provide executive direction over the broad economic and domestic policy front, though the complex web of sub-committees (covering trade, transport, shipping, food and agriculture) was liable to get overloaded, bogged down and deadlocked. Chamberlain took the lead in preparing sweeping emergency-powers legislation and he handled a wide range of other issues: ‘financial policy and exports, the supply of labour to agriculture, the position of aliens, the organisation of underground warfare in the event of invasion and the disruptive effects of German air raids on munitions production’. Churchill praised him as ‘the best man he had – head and shoulders over the average man in the administration’; the prime minister said he did not know what he would do without him. Whitehall officials saw him as ‘the one Minister in this field from whom you could get clear and immediate directives’. Labour Party politicians had long hated and feared Chamberlain (Baldwin had once complained that Chamberlain treated Labour as dirt – ‘intellectually, they are dirt’, he had replied). But they were impressed when, now on the ‘inside’ themselves, they saw him in action and soon ‘considerably revised their ideas of [his] value to the government’. ‘Very able and crafty’, was Attlee’s verdict, ‘very businesslike’, a good chairman and committeeman: ‘you could work with him’.55 Chamberlain played a part in all the big strategic decisions in this period, weighing in for instance in War Cabinet discussions about bombing Germany and about the idea of an Anglo-French Union to try to forestall French capitulation, examining the consequences of the fall of France and the evacuation of the BEF, and involved in an attempt to persuade de Valera to abandon Eire’s neutrality, even at the price of a united Ireland.56 Most crucial of all was the role he played during the critical few days at the end of May 1940 when the War Cabinet was secretly debating whether to negotiate with Hitler (through Mussolini) or to continue the war. At this backs-to-the-wall moment, had Chamberlain supported Halifax, who was pressing strongly for an approach to Italy to explore a negotiated peace, then the War Cabinet would have been split down the middle and Churchill’s position may have become impossible. But after initially sitting on the fence, he came down decisively against the idea of throwing in the towel: Hitler could not be trusted, Chamberlain now knew, a peace deal on his terms would be worthless, there was no alternative but to fight on. It was a ‘hinge’ moment for the government, the country and the free world.57 Their partnership, and Chamberlain’s support and loyalty, were important and valuable and of direct practical assistance to Churchill. In return he defended Chamberlain against attacks and plots to remove him from the government. Pressure mounted particularly in the aftermath of Dunkirk, with mounting press criticism of the ‘Guilty Men’, demands for his




dismissal from Labour MPs and some trade unions, and the so-called ‘undersecretaries plot’ involving anti-Chamberlain Conservatives. An opinion poll reported 77 per cent of the public wanted Chamberlain fired. Chamberlain offered to resign (on 5 June) but Churchill refused and was adamant there should be no witch hunt. After the prime minister’s intervention the press campaign was halted virtually overnight; Labour leaders promised to muzzle the agitation in their party; uppity junior ministers were brutally told to stop the conspiracies or leave the government themselves. The underlying parliamentary arithmetic had not changed, as Churchill knew – Chamberlain was still Conservative leader and strongly backed by the majority of Tory MPs – even if Chamberlain’s public reputation had received blows from which it was never to recover. Churchill exacted a price for his support in the shape of getting Chamberlain to drop his veto over the offer of a government post to Lloyd George. He had twice threatened to resign if the old Welshman were brought in – they loathed and mistrusted each other, and Chamberlain was sure Lloyd George aimed to destroy him – but when Churchill brought the matter up again, Chamberlain had reluctantly to acquiesce; to his relief, Lloyd George decided to stay out. In the end Chamberlain left the government only because he was mortally ill, not because he was forced out, and Churchill was unhappy to lose him. From mid-June he was reporting serious abdominal pain and an operation in late July revealed he was suffering from terminal bowel cancer, though his doctors did not at that stage tell him. Chamberlain wanted to go on working ‘in my present capacity’ till the end of the war, but accepted that ideas of political activity or a possible comeback as prime minister after the war were now impossible. After six weeks convalescence he managed about ten days back at work in London in mid-September before, in a state of physical collapse, he had to leave the capital for good. He offered his resignation on 22 September but Churchill would not at first accept it; soon, however, he decided to let him go as part of a reshuffle (3 October) designed to distract attention from the military setback at Dakar. Shortly afterwards Churchill succeeded him as Conservative Party leader. A month later, on 9 November 1940, Chamberlain died. He had refused a peerage and the Order of the Garter, preferring, like his famous father, to die plain ‘Mr Chamberlain’.58



148 After Number 10

7

Clement Attlee (left office 26 October 1951) When Attlee left office he had been prime minister for six years and three months and before that Churchill’s deputy in the War Cabinet for five years, and he had been leader of the Labour Party for 16 years (since 1935). He was 68 years old, exhausted after 11 gruelling years in government, and had been hospitalised twice while prime minister, in 1948 and 1951, suffering from duodenal ulcers. It might have been thought a good moment to step down. Attlee’s wife would have liked him to retire. A year or two earlier a retirement cottage had been bought in the Chilterns, a few miles from Chequers, a place the Attlees had grown to love. Attlee himself later admitted he wanted to go after the 1951 election.1 However, there was no call from within the party for him to quit and when parliament reassembled Labour MPs re-elected him as leader unopposed and by acclamation. Labour had lost the 1951 general election only narrowly, polling more votes than the Conservatives who had only a small 17-seat majority. Attlee had high approval ratings and was an undoubted electoral asset. The Conservatives might not last long, it was thought, and the pendulum might swing in Labour’s direction sooner rather than later. The four years, until December 1955, in which he led the Labour Party and was Leader of the Opposition were not a happy or successful period for him or his party. Although Labour was ahead in the opinion polls for most of the period, it rarely had a big lead after 1952, and in the May 1955 election the Conservatives won comfortably, polling 3.3 per cent more votes than Labour (who lost 1.5 million voters compared with 1951) and increasing their majority to 59 seats. The handover from Churchill to the 57 years old Eden in April 1955 underlined the 72 years old Attlee’s status as a member of a political generation whose time had passed. His health was not good: he needed an appendix operation in 1953; in February 1955 he fainted into Churchill’s arms (‘some of the others are not lasting as well as I am’, remarked the 81 years old Churchill, with grim satisfaction2); and in August 1955 he had a slight stroke. 149



Attlee to Douglas-Home

Attlee stayed on as Labour leader in the 1950s ‘long beyond the time when he could make any positive contribution in that role’. He showed little interest in the necessary task of rethinking social democratic policy and doctrine. Aloof and distant, he lacked ‘the inspirational and innovative power to rally his forces’. Outstanding in government, he underwhelmed (as in the 1930s) in opposition: ‘he was too reasonable, and too little the partisan … he was as poor as ever at courting publicity’.3 Personality clashes and factional infighting had been starting to pull Labour apart while still in government, and the splits, divisions and policy differences (often over foreign policy and defence) intensified in opposition. Attlee had survived so long as leader by having an acute sense of the balance of party opinion, and often by following rather than leading his party. After 1951 it became more difficult to paper over the cracks, hold the party together and broker compromises. Internal Labour politics became exceptionally bitter, with much bloodletting at the 1952 party conference and an attempt (headed off by Attlee at the last minute) by the hardliners on the right to expel from the party the leader of the left, Aneurin Bevan, just before the 1955 election. Attlee often seemed weak and vacillating – hoping that somehow the party would pull itself together – and his critics wanted him to come down off the fence and give a stronger lead. He ‘doodled where he ought to have led’, complained Herbert Morrison.4 At one point it looked as if Attlee’s 70th birthday in January 1953 would provide an appropriate retirement opportunity, and he assured some colleagues he would bow out at that time but changed his mind, claiming friends had pressed him to stay and that the party was in such turmoil that he felt he had a duty to stay on to save it from splitting asunder. His justification for clinging on was that victory for one or other of the two rivals for the succession – Bevan on the left or Morrison on the right – would spark an all-out party civil war. Beneath his concern for party unity was the fact that after so long at the top Attlee had become used to being party leader and had come to regard himself as indispensable. He was determined to block his long-time rival Morrison, hanging on until his candidacy was weakened by the emergence of a younger and more attractive successor, Hugh Gaitskell.5 Attlee campaigned in an old-fashioned way in his last general election as leader in 1955, his wife, Vi, driving him in their own car 1,200 miles around the country, where he spoke at forty meetings. After the defeat he announced that he was ready to go at once but was cynically pressed to stay on by Morrison’s enemies on the left and the right, though realistically the leadership issue could not be long delayed. Attlee was now 72 and Morrison 67 – both were fading forces. Six months later, on 7 December 1955, he finally stepped down as party leader. Its seems that earlier Attlee had wanted Bevan to be leader but came to feel he had thrown his chance away by being too undisciplined and too much of a rebel. Gaitskell (but



150 After Number 10

not other contenders) had been privately tipped off a week or so before Attlee’s departure was confirmed, and while Attlee was not particularly close to or keen on him, he felt he would win, which he did decisively.6 ‘One either has to stay on in the House of Commons when one is perhaps a nuisance, or not of much use, or to give up constant connection with public affairs and with old friends’, Attlee once explained about the advantages of going to the House of Lords, a place where it was possible to ‘still keep in contact with affairs’ and ‘sometimes, possibly … contribute something’. He had conventional, small-‘c’ conservative views about the honours system and himself accumulated an impressive collection of honours: a CH (1945), an OM (1951), an Earldom (1955) and a KG (1956). He went to see Anthony Eden, then the prime minister, when he had decided to retire, to ask for his Earldom, saying ‘That’s the rate for the job.’ He accepted the House of Lords was an anomaly, illogical, democratically indefensible and sometimes rather dull, supporting life peerages and criticising the party imbalance there, but – always a constitutional conservative – felt it worked in practice satisfactorily enough and that reform was not a burning question or a high priority.7 He had no intention of remaining an active politician but he had a fairly busy retirement. He seemed to relish the part of ‘Former Prime Minister’ more than he did some of his earlier roles (particularly that of opposition leader), it has been said. ‘Now that he no longer had to “shape up” to his party’s expectations he could revert somewhat to the influences of his youth when ideology meant nothing and ethos was all’, commented D.J. Heasman. ‘Identifying himself with what he took to be the ethos of the nation as a whole he could now afford to be less inhibited in his pronouncements on men who in themselves or their policies had failed to “measure up”.’ ‘I have arrived at the years of irresponsibility’, as Attlee quipped in 1959. ‘It doesn’t matter a hoot what I say.’8 In 1964 he opposed the winding-up of the Admiralty, declaring ‘I like the old titles’ and complaining abut the Conservative government’s iconoclasm and change for change’s sake. In a Lords debate on industrial relations he likened the wellrun firm to a well-run regiment, saying it called for the same kind of leadership and concern for morale. When the only Communist peer made his maiden speech, it fell to Attlee as the next speaker to congratulate him. ‘There are many anomalies in this country’, he said. ‘One curious one is that the voice of the Communist Party can be heard only in this House.’ ‘That’, he continued as peers laughed, ‘is the advantage of hereditary representation.’9 He was serious and diligent about attending the Lords, where he made some effective and well-regarded interventions and speeches. When the Lords were sitting, he would travel in like an ordinary commuter: Vi would drive him to Great Missenden station and he would sit in a third-class compartment on the train to Baker Street, then go by tube to Westminster.



Attlee to Douglas-Home 151

Only occasionally would he be recognised. There was a modesty and absence of self-importance about ex-prime minister Attlee, as Francis Beckett notes: after an event at the LSE, he was asked when his car was coming to pick him up and admitted he had travelled there by bus!10 Attlee followed domestic politics closely but was not a major presence on the stage or a nuisance for his successors. He was critical of Eden over Suez, warning the government in July 1956 against anything that might look like colonialism, aggression or adventurism, but then thought that Eden was wrong to halt prematurely the military action – ‘if you’ve broken the eggs you should make the omelette’. At Macmillan’s invitation he chaired a confidential Whitehall inquiry into the ‘burden on ministers’ in 1957. Attlee admired Macmillan’s ‘wind of change’ colonial and African policy, and remembered with respect his concern for the unemployed in the 1930s, but was shocked by his cynical sacking of a third of the Cabinet in the 1962 ‘night of the long knives’. Although loyal in public, he was cool about Gaitskell. Asked about Gaitskell’s leadership and party management he replied: ‘Not ideal. Man of character, but lacked experience of the movement and inclined to be doctrinaire.’ The battle to remove Clause IV from the party’s constitution was a great mistake, Attlee thought. Labour’s ‘passion for over-definition’ should always be resisted; Gaitskell should have ‘sedated’ the party, not ‘excited’ it. In the elections of 1959 and 1964 he did his bit for the party, campaigning and undertaking speaking engagements. When Labour returned to power the Wilson government disappointed him. ‘I had a much better government than the present one’, he grumbled in 1967. ‘They seem to adopt Tory policy in everything.’ He predicted ‘an almighty smash’ for Labour at the next election, even though the Tories were ‘not much good’. Speaking to Labour MPs in 1964, he vaingloriously ‘couldn’t think of any mistake that his government had made’. But a couple of years later he dismissed Wilson’s Labour government as just ‘very weak’.11 Attlee lived modestly on his £2,000 a year prime ministers’ pension, the three guineas a day House of Lords attendance allowance, and whatever he could make from lecture tours and journalism. ‘Payment is in inverse ratio to the character of the paper’, he once noted. He had virtually no savings from his years in office. He left only £6,700 in his will – the smallest sum left by any recent former prime minister. Notoriously taciturn, ‘in his years of retirement he was anything but uncommunicative with his typewriter’, was Heasman’s apt comment. He did much book reviewing and could be waspish in his judgements: Morrison’s memoirs were ‘a fine work of fiction’, Churchill’s History of the English Speaking People should have been called ‘Things in history which have interested me’. In an article about parliament he decried the trend for MPs to become full-time parliamentarians without outside interests and briskly argued that MPs should not become the ‘servants’ of their constituents, ‘at the beck and call of all and sundry every weekend’.12



152 After Number 10

His autobiography, As It Happened, had been published in 1954. It has been described as ‘one of the least interesting political autobiographies ever written’ and as ‘so unrevealing as to be almost comic’. Attlee himself once admitted it was ‘not very good’. He was pretty guarded in the taped interviews with Francis Williams, his former press secretary in Number 10, which were the basis for the (1961) book, A Prime Minister Remembers and in the interviews filmed in 1965 for the Granada Historical Records Series. His 1960 Chichele lectures at Oxford were turned into a slim book, Empire into Commonwealth, described by a critical reviewer as ‘commonplace and pedestrian’.13 Lecture tours took him to the USA, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. He gathered good audiences, speaking on topics like ‘World Government or World Chaos’, ‘The Future of Europe’, and ‘The Future of Democratic Government’. The vital necessity of world government became a key political theme of his retirement years – it was ‘a long-term interest of his’, as Robert Pearce notes, ‘though one he had done little to foster while in office’. He called for reform and strengthening of the United Nations, world disarmament and the abolition of the right to make war, and an international police force. Nations had to give up part of their sovereignty and accede to a world federation. He went with a delegation to Moscow in 1961 to discuss the issues with the Kremlin, with little effect. He was still pressing his case and writing letters to the press about the issue in the last year of his life.14 He opposed British entry to the EEC, believing it would damage the Commonwealth link and detract from Britain’s outward-looking international role. We should not ‘go cap in hand’ to a narrow group of European countries with ‘unstable records’, he protested in 1962. ‘I SAY HALT – Britain must not become merely a part of Europe’, he wrote in the Sunday Express. In 1967, with Wilson renewing negotiations for British entry, Attlee’s ‘objection to our being hustled into the Common Market’ attracted widespread publicity.15 Attlee was hospitalised with prostate trouble in 1959 and had a heart attack in 1961, needing a major operation in 1962 for a duodenal ulcer. In June 1964 his wife suddenly died. Attlee, now in his early eighties and becoming frail and weak, moved to a flat in the Temple, in London. ‘I’ve been to a number of funerals lately of my old colleagues’, he remarked in 1965, ‘do you think I will be the next?’16 He lasted until 8 October 1967, dying aged 84, after developing pneumonia. After a funeral service in Temple Church, his ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey.

Winston Churchill (resigned 5 April 1955) Churchill had to wait a long time for the premiership and first became prime minister in 1940 at age 65. In all 32 British prime ministers had already left the office (and in 11 cases died) at or before that age. He was




just a month or so short of his 77th birthday when he started his second term in 1951; only Gladstone in 1892 was older (82) at the start of a premiership. When he finally retired, on 5 April 1955, he was 80 years and four months old – the oldest prime minister of the 20th century and only the third octogenarian ever to hold the office. He then lived for another nine years and ten months. At the time of his death on 24 January 1965 aged 90 he was the longest-lived former British prime minister, though three of his successors lived to be 92. Retirement after his election defeat in 1945 (when Churchill was 70) would have been welcomed by Churchill’s wife and by his political heir apparent, Anthony Eden, whose reassurance that the great man’s place in history was secure and could have gained nothing by anything he might do in the post-war years was double-edged. As Roy Jenkins put it, after 1945 Churchill ‘had nowhere to go but down’. He was initially stunned, bitter and depressed at losing power. But in June 1946 he admitted, while ‘a short time ago I was ready to retire and die gracefully’, now he was ‘going to stay and have them out. I’ll tear their bleeding entrails out of them’. 17 However, he neither enjoyed opposition nor distinguished himself as Leader of the Opposition 1945–51. He left as much as possible of the work involved to others, while concentrating on writing his war memoirs and playing the role of world statesman. Churchill said he always believed in staying in the pub until closing time. He clung on tenaciously far longer than anyone expected, until he left reluctantly and under massive pressure from his political colleagues in April 1955. ‘I don’t want to go’, he confessed a few days before the fateful day, ‘but Anthony wants it so much.’ In 1951 he had given the impression he would stay in Number 10 for only a year or so. But, despite unmistakeable signs of old age and flagging energies, and a serious stroke that almost killed him in 1953, he refused to be prised out of office and kept coming up with excuses to postpone retirement. Increasingly-frustrated ministers complained he was ‘gaga’, but it would be better to say that his performance as prime minister after 1951 was uneven: sometimes he could rouse himself for a big occasion and the old zest and fire would be seen, at other times (and increasingly) he was lethargic and ineffective. If Eden had shown more steel and ruthlessness he would have grasped the crown earlier; and if Eden not been seriously ill and hospitalised in 1953, Churchill would almost certainly have been forced to resign at the time of his stroke. After that blow, Churchill’s ‘advancing decrepitude’ and the fact he was no longer up to the job became more obvious. In a conversation with his doctor Lord Moran in August 1954, Churchill hinted he would prefer to die in office, something confirmed by his daughter Mary Soames in March 1955, who said that from his own point of view ‘it would have been better if he had gone on till he dropped in his tracks’. Churchill dreaded the emptiness and boredom of retirement: ‘there would be no purpose in living’, he said, ‘when there is nothing to do.’18



154 After Number 10

He tried to put a brave face on it. ‘It is a strange and formidable experience laying down responsibility and letting the trappings of power fall in a heap to the ground,’ Churchill wrote to US President Eisenhower three months after resigning. ‘A sense not only of psychological but of physical relaxation steals over one to leave a feeling both of relief and denudation. I did not know how tired I was until I stopped working.’ He told a friend he was ‘enjoying the period of comparative leisure and it is a real relief for me to be freed from the burdens of Prime Minister. The worst thing about it is that when you let all these responsibilities drop you feel your power falls with the thing it held.’ Those close to him were not fooled. His secretaries realised, as one of them put it, ‘how shattering it was for him to retire’. One of them told Moran: ‘He comes into the office and asks if anything has happened, just as he used to do. You know that for years he has been inundated with “paper” and with official business. And then, all at once, as if a tap has been turned off, it has ceased. All the bustle and stir has gone out of his life. Yesterday Sir Norman Brook [the Cabinet Secretary] sent him a message by a despatch rider. Sir Winston was delighted. Not with the message, but with the messenger. It was an echo from the past.’ When Churchill saw Moran soon after retiring he admitted he had been ‘going through considerable psychological changes. I have had to let things drop from my mind. I have had to shed responsibility and become a spectator.’ ‘I have no desire now for anything that means effort,’ he continued. ‘I have got to kill time till time kills me.’19 Churchill was proud to be the ‘Great Commoner’ and had no desire to sit in the House of Lords. He had declined the Order of the Garter in 1945 but accepted it in 1953. He would have liked to have had it both ways, in the sense of remaining plain ‘Mr Churchill’ rather than becoming known as ‘Sir Winston’. As for the House of Lords, it ‘means nothing to him’, Moran once noted. A plot to kick him upstairs as prime minister in the Lords in 1952 never got off the ground when it was realised Churchill would never agree. ‘I am afraid that he regards us in the Lords as a rather disreputable collection of old gentleman’, sighed Lord Salisbury. When he retired, the Queen offered him a dukedom but only after discreet enquiries confirmed he would refuse it. There was a last-minute ‘wobble’ when it seemed – to the Queen’s alarm – that he might, after all, accept it, but he did decline the honour. He said that were he unable to stay in the Commons he would be proud if the offer could be reconsidered, but he never asked for it to be renewed. He had long supported the idea that peers should be able to renounce their peerages and stand for election to the Commons, and he backed the Labour MP Anthony Wedgwood Benn’s campaign to change the law to allow him to stay in the Commons when he inherited his peerage in 1960. Churchill made a donation (of ten pounds) to Benn’s campaign fund when he fought the by-election ordered in his constituency, and 10,000 copies of a letter of support Churchill wrote him were distributed to voters.20




Although he remained an MP, and became Father of the House in 1959 – by then the only MP first elected in the reign of Queen Victoria – Churchill took little part in parliamentary life after retiring as prime minister. From time to time he attended sessions, sitting prominently on the corner seat on the front bench below the gangway, and he occasionally voted. But he did not speak in parliament again, except for brief thanks, literally a sentence each time, acknowledging congratulations on his birthday in 1959 and 1961. He was angry early in 1956, when the Commons voted against the death penalty, and fumed about going to parliament to warn ‘the country is going soft’, but realised he was not up to speaking: ‘there is no longer the necessary clarity of thought’. Later, in July 1958, he told Macmillan he was going to make a speech about the Middle East, and even drafted some notes, but then changed his mind and decided he had ‘nothing worth saying’.21 He visited his constituency only rarely but resisted attempts to talk him out of standing for election again in 1959, by which time he had declined so much it would have been better if he had called it a day and not stood. The local Conservative association were ‘acquiescent rather than enthusiastic’ by that stage and there was soon discreet pressure for it to be able to go ahead and select someone to succeed him in good time for the next election. Much family pressure was brought to bear, but Churchill was obstinate – he said he hoped he would die in the House – and only in April 1963, to everyone’s relief, he finally announced he would retire at the next election. Some of Churchill’s entourage suggested that, uniquely, he be made an honorary Life Member of Parliament, to give him a last link with political life, but the Conservative government turned down the idea. In his last year or two he attended the Commons only a few times, in a wheelchair. His last appearance there was on 27 July 1964; the next day the three party leaders called on him at home to present a Vote of Thanks from the Commons for his services to parliament and the nation.22 By the time he retired from the premiership Churchill was a rich man. For much of his life, his finances had been rackety and he had churned out journalism to fund his extravagant lifestyle. His fortunes began to change during the war when Alexander Korda bought the film rights for two of the prime minister’s books (Marlborough and History of the English-Speaking Peoples) for a total of £100,000. Then in 1946 a group of wealthy benefactors purchased Chartwell, his house in Kent, and presented it to the National Trust, on condition he and Clementine Churchill would have the right to live there for the rest of their lives (Churchill made £43,000 from the sale). To avoid penal rates of taxation, maximise earnings from his war memoirs, and provide for his family after his death, a special trust was set up and given ownership of his papers, which then sold the literary rights. Churchill was paid £20,000 a year by the trust – double the prime minister’s salary at that time. The book deal for his Second World War memoirs



156 After Number 10

(six volumes published between 1948 and 1954), negotiated in 1947, was worth £555,000 or over $2.2 million – the value in today’s money estimated by David Reynolds as anything between $18 and $50 million. New deals were still being arranged after he finally retired, including £20,000 for a 10,000-word epilogue for a one-volume abridgement of the war memoirs in 1957, the sale of the film and TV rights to The Second World War for $75,000 in 1959, and £100,000 for the film rights (in 1960) for My Early Life. At death Churchill left £304,000 (equivalent to over £3 million today).23 The government thought it was important to keep Churchill informed and supported. Uniquely a Foreign Office official, Anthony Montague Browne, was seconded to be his private secretary (he became a close companion, staying with Churchill until the end of his life), though Churchill reimbursed the government for the cost of his salary. Foreign Office telegrams were sent to the former prime minister, though Montague Browne says he only ‘skimmed through them like a newspaper holiday-reader on the beach’. He was regularly briefed and updated on developments during the Suez crisis. The government wanted to keep him on board and, as Jenkins says, while he still had for a while ‘a semi-diplomatic world role’, meeting foreign leaders and world statesmen, such as Adenauer, de Gaulle and Eisenhower, ‘help to steer him through such delicate waters’.24 Although he had a massive domestic and international reputation and an iconic and legendary status, it is difficult to point to much direct political impact after he left Number 10. Eden wanted to be his own man and, while he was friendly and kept in touch with his old chief, made sure he did not play a part in the national campaign or make a party political broadcast in the 1955 general election, though Churchill would have been happy to have had a role. Six months later, at Eden’s request, he had a long talk with a wavering R.A. Butler, to try to persuade him to move from the Treasury to become Leader of the Commons and a non-departmental minister. He had had doubts about Eden as his successor – ‘I don’t believe Anthony can do it’ – and shared the growing anxieties about Eden’s moods and weaknesses even before the new prime minister was tested to destruction by the Suez crisis.25 As prime minister Churchill had fought all the way against British withdrawal from the Suez Canal zone and it was to be expected he would support strong action against Nasser when he nationalised the canal – ‘we can’t have that malicious swine sitting across our communications’. When Macmillan saw him and talked about the need to bring in Israel, destroy the Egyptian forces and bring down Nasser, he noted in his diary ‘Churchill got out some maps and got quite excited’. The next day, in ‘Action This Day’ mode, Churchill spent August Bank Holiday Monday driving from Chartwell to Chequers, dictating in the car a note setting out his views on the military issues and options, which was typed up by his secretary in a lay-by, and then discussed the military planning with Eden. At the height




of the crisis, in October 1956, Eden summoned Montague Browne to ask whether Churchill would accept a seat in the Cabinet without portfolio. The astounded Montague Browne replied he would not like ‘the opposite of the harlot’s prerogative’ (responsibility without power). It was a strange episode, suggestive perhaps of Eden’s increasing stress and insecurity, and it is not clear how much Churchill – then recovering from another minor stroke – would have been able to contribute. In November he issued a public statement spelling out his support for government policy. But in private he was critical. In early August he insisted ‘We don’t need the Americans for this’, but his later verdict on the Suez fiasco was: ‘I would never have done it without squaring the Americans, and once I’d started I would never have dared stop.’ He was dismayed that the operation was halted almost as soon as it started, as he told Moran: ‘To go so far and not go on was madness.’ Moran claims that by late-November 1956 Churchill was sensing Eden’s days were numbered and saying he would like to see Macmillan as prime minister. In January 1957, when Eden resigned, Churchill was among those who gave advice to the Queen to appoint Macmillan. However, the support of the overwhelming majority of the Cabinet for Macmillan over Butler, rather than the backing of Churchill, was the decisive factor. Later, Churchill was disappointed by Macmillan; in 1960 he thought he ‘ought not to have gone to Africa, encouraging the black men’ with his famous ‘wind of change’ speech.26 After Suez Churchill did ‘everything he could’, says Jenkins, ‘through letters to Eisenhower and on his visit to the White House two years later, to repair the damage to Anglo-American relations.’ The US visit, in May 1959, was his last effort for the ‘special relationship’, and while Churchill liked feeling he was ‘on the map again’, as Moran put it, his health was not good and it is claimed he needed ‘massive doses of stimulants’ prescribed by his doctor to get him through. He stayed three days in the White House and spent a good deal of time with his old wartime friend, President Eisenhower. ‘Ike’ was extremely affable but their talks and conversations, it was noted, were of ‘a very general nature [and] ranged much over personalities’. When Churchill raised, as the Foreign Office wanted him to, the issue of discrimination against British contractors and US protectionist tendencies, he got sympathetic noises but little else. Did he, asks Montague Browne, influence US policy towards Britain? ‘Not one jot’, was the conclusion. ‘We had long since been filed as “past business”.’27 Lord Moran had always doubted whether his patient would be happy in retirement. ‘I must have something to look forward to’, Churchill had said to him. ‘I can’t do nothing for the rest of my days.’ Influenced by his scientist friend, Lord Cherwell, he led a financial appeal to create a British version of MIT. The outcome was the establishment of a new Cambridge college, named after him, initially devoted to science and technology. He turned to the task of completing work on his four-volume History of the



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English-Speaking Peoples, originally begun before the Second World War. A team of historians and other aides provided material and worked on drafts, while Churchill tinkered and polished. His role, he admitted, ‘was simple, just rearrangement and picking out an unnecessary passage here and there. It’s thinking and composing I find difficult.’ One of his team, the historian Bill Deakin, judged that Churchill no longer had ‘the energy to handle great masses of material’ and that his contributions ‘were frankly not of much value’. Published between 1956 and 1958, it sold well chiefly because of the fame of its author, but had a decidedly old-fashioned feel to it, with its narrative of kings, battles and constitutional struggles. The book stopped in Victoria’s reign. ‘I could not write about the woe and ruin of the terrible twentieth century’, Churchill admitted. ‘We answered all the tests. But it was useless.’ This bleak comment testified to the sense of political failure and disappointment that took hold of Churchill in retirement. ‘I am afraid we are going downhill’, he said to Moran in September 1956. ‘The fallen state of Britain troubles him more than his own parlous condition’, Moran noted in his diary. ‘I have worked very hard all my life’, Churchill said to Montague Browne one day, ‘and I have achieved a great deal – in the end to achieve NOTHING.’ All that Churchill had stood for and fought for he saw had been lost or was passing away, and he felt ‘profound melancholy’ at the decline of the Empire and of British power.28 In February 1957 Macmillan had lunch with Churchill (now 82) and noted, ‘He has aged, but he is still very well informed and misses little that goes on.’ Meeting him again six months later, he found Churchill ‘in pretty good form and remarkably quick either on very old questions (where his memory is most attentive) or on very new ones (which he has not had time to forget)’. Churchill had predicted ‘I shall die quickly once I retire’, but he was wrong. Instead there was a tragic process of physical and mental decay. As his friend Brendan Bracken said, he had ‘disregarded all the normal lifelengthening rules’. But he became very deaf, and a succession of strokes in 1956, 1959, 1960 and 1963, pneumonia in 1958, and a broken hip after a fall in 1962 meant he became an invalid in his last years. His memory started to go, and deep boredom and depression clouded his days. ‘I’m waiting for death … But it won’t come’, he complained. ‘My life is over, but not yet ended.’ A visitor in 1958 likened him to ‘the embers of a great fire, all the force gone’. Moran describes him sinking into a state of ‘apathy and indifference’, becoming eventually just a shell of a man, waiting blankly for the end.29 He spent much time abroad, chiefly in the south of France, staying in the luxurious Riviera villas of wealthy friends such as Lord Beaverbrook and Emery Reeves (his literary adviser) or cruising in the Mediterranean or the West Indies in the large yacht of the Greek shipowner Aristotle Onassis. Clementine Churchill did not approve of her husband’s friends and did not usually accompany him on these long trips. He did a few last paintings and




read a lot, including, apparently, Trollope and Wuthering Heights for the first time, spending many hours whiling away the time by playing cards and bezique. The deaths of old friends like Brendan Bracken and Lord Cherwell (‘The Prof’) deepened his gloom and isolation. Family problems crowded in: Clementine Churchill was often in poor health herself; relations with his son Randolph had long been difficult, even tempestuous, though he approved his appointment as official biographer; one daughter, Sarah, had serious drink problems, while another, Diana, committed suicide in 1963. Churchill turned 90 in November 1964. On 10 January 1965 he suffered another massive stroke and after lingering for two weeks died in his house at Hyde Park Gate in London on 24 January (exactly 70 years to the day after the death of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill). The normal practice is for parliament to adjourn for the day on the death being announced of a former prime minister, but for Churchill it was adjourned for a week, until after the laying-in-state in Westminster Hall and the magnificent, longplanned and carefully stage-managed state funeral at St Paul’s Cathedral. Of prime-ministerial funerals only Wellington’s could compare, and Churchill’s passing was more of an international event.30 Churchill was buried next to the graves of his father, mother and brother in Bladon Churchyard near to his birthplace at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.

Anthony Eden (resigned 9 January 1957) Eden resigned as prime minister after just 21 months in Number 10, his premiership and reputation wrecked by the Suez crisis. Although he enjoyed high personal poll ratings and had increased the Conservative government’s majority at the general election, called soon after he took over from Churchill in 1955, there had been growing doubts about his character, temperament and ability to do the job of prime minister even before Suez. Eden had been seriously ill and had almost died in 1953 when a gallstones operation went wrong and his bile duct was accidentally cut. He had needed emergency surgery and a long convalescence but, although experiencing occasional fevers and chills in the interim, believed he was in good enough health to become PM in 1955. However, the strains of the Suez crisis, compounded by a recurrence of illness, and the effects of drugs used to treat him, made a crack-up almost inevitable, and in late-November 1956 he needed to be whisked off to Jamaica for three weeks to recuperate. David Owen, a former Foreign Secretary and himself a medic, believes that a fit and well Eden would not have made the mistakes of judgement and decision-making he did in 1956. 31 Whatever the case, Eden’s political position had been fatally undermined in his party and the Cabinet, and power was draining away from him, even before his doctors insisted in the New Year that if he did not immediately resign he would soon collapse again and endanger and shorten his life.



160 After Number 10

Eden resigned as an MP, and was the first to quit simultaneously both the premiership and the Commons without going immediately to the House of Lords, for he declined the Queen’s offer of an Earldom. The Queen did not ask him formally for advice as to his successor, nor did he volunteer a recommendation. He assumed it would be Macmillan, who was decisively backed by an overwhelming majority of the Cabinet. The evidence of Eden’s praise for Butler in his audience with the Queen and a private letter sent from his wife to Butler combine to leave the impression that he was himself perhaps more sympathetic to ‘RAB’.32 If not literally sailing off into the sunset at the end of his political career, the former prime minister and his wife left within a few days on a long voyage to New Zealand, through the Panama Canal, because the Suez Canal was closed. He received a VIP, red carpet, band-playing welcome from cheering crowds and the New Zealand prime minister when he docked in Auckland. He was as his wife records ‘very unhappy’. Aged just 59 he had no plans and the future was uncertain. He had never been well-off and had no income beyond his prime-ministerial pension, nowhere to live apart from Clarissa Eden’s cottage in Wiltshire, and was in poor health. David Carlton describes him as ‘sick and … dispirited’. He fell ill again in New Zealand and had to be flown to the US for another operation. With a serious health problem that was going to recur, requiring future operations, the doctors’ verdict was that Eden would be capable only of ‘leading a very quiet life’ and would have to ‘remain out of things’. It was a sentence of political death, but Eden only slowly and reluctantly came to terms with it. Violet Bonham-Carter had noted when he resigned: ‘Now he faces a complete vacuum. Politics have always been his be-all and his end-all. He cares for nothing else.’ For several years, however unrealistically, he seems to have dreamed of some sort of political comeback. He continued to follow politics and international affairs avidly and regretted having resigned his parliamentary seat. He found, according to Robert Rhodes James, that ‘he missed politics more than he had anticipated and until late 1960 did not give up the idea of standing again for the House of Commons’.33 Only when he finally went to the House of Lords in 1961 (as the Earl of Avon) did Eden accept his political career was over for good. ‘He feels it will be the irrevocable step’, Clarissa Eden told Beaverbrook, ‘because he always thinks in the back of his mind that the miracle will happen and he will be well enough to go back to politics – which, of course, he won’t.’ ‘It provides a platform with less trouble’, was Eden’s own explanation, saying he did not propose to attend ‘with any regularity’ but might make a speech or two there a year and do the same in the country.’ Further ill health – a chest operation in 1962 and a heart attack in 1963 – underlined that it was the only course open to him. ‘There is no chance of my returning to political life’, he told journalists in September 1963. ‘I am all right as long as I am not working hard.’34




Much of Eden’s time between 1958 and 1964 was devoted to writing his memoirs. At one point the press baron Lord Beaverbrook offered one million pounds for his papers, memoirs and articles, but Eden did not like the proposed deal. Eventually a contract was signed with The Times (for £160,000) that brought Eden financial security, and with unexpectedly successful sales a sum equivalent to nearly £3 million today was made.35 Like Churchill Eden was helped with his memoirs by a team of talented historians and researchers. They came out in three volumes totalling nearly 1800 pages: Full Circle, covering the period 1951–57, in 1960; Facing the Dictators, on the 1930s, in 1962; and The Reckoning, covering the Second World War, in 1965. They have been neatly described as ‘hard work to write, and hard work to read’ and as tending to be more of a ‘diplomatic record rather than a true autobiography’. They were ‘immensely long and dry’, but the heavy documentary content made volumes two and three in particular important contributions to historical knowledge at a time when the official files were still closed under the Fifty Year Rule. Eden wanted to justify and vindicate himself over Suez, and demonstrate the unity of his career. As David Dutton puts it, the premise was that ‘Far from being an aberration, Suez only made sense in the light of the lessons learnt from the earlier phases of his political life.’ In Full Circle the theme was the ‘lessons’ of the 1930s applied to the 1950s. He wrote about the most recent and controversial period of his political career first at the insistence of The Times, and to get his version out quickly because it was not then certain how long he would live. It meant that, as Dutton says, by ‘giving a detailed account of the inner workings of government so soon after the events described, Eden broke new ground in the conventions surrounding political memoirs’. It also meant a complete lack of frankness about the key issue of ‘collusion’, with no reference to the secret Sèvres pact with France and Israel. If Eden had written later – after the publication of books like Anthony Nutting’s No End of a Lesson (1967) and Hugh Thomas’s The Suez Affair (1967) – he would have had to address it in some way. He even agreed with Selwyn Lloyd, who had been his Foreign Secretary, to coordinate their responses to historians and journalists working on the story of Suez – ‘collusion about collusion’, as Richard Thorpe calls it.36 Eden wrote the occasional newspaper or journal article and gave a few lectures. In a 1966 essay for Chatham House, Towards Peace in IndoChina, drawing on his experience of the 1954 Geneva conference, he put forward ideas for new settlement involving great-power guarantees of the territory and neutrality of North and South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. He did not give many press or TV interviews, but appeared in a CBS programme ‘The Twentieth Century’ in 1964, and in 1974 was interviewed on the BBC about his wartime recollections, reminiscing about Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini. In 1976 he enjoyed an unexpected critical and commercial success with the publication of his final and best book, Another World, a



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minor classic of autobiographical writing, and a short but deeply personal and moving account of his childhood, family background and First World War experiences.37 Thin-skinned, volatile and sensitive to criticism in office, Eden was in retirement exceptionally touchy about his reputation and image, and the way his career was presented by others, whether other politicians writing their memoirs or historians. He could ‘react with anger and fierceness when he considered [his reputation] was being impugned’, says Rhodes James. Both on Suez (where the book by Nutting, a former protégé who had resigned from his government over the crisis, angered him) and on the 1930s (where he was concerned about the trend of revisionist writing in the 1960s and about books by ‘lamentably, appeasement-minded’ history professors), he was quick to take offence. Calmer heads might think that threats of legal action for libel or defamation of character against a former Cabinet colleague and old friend, Lord Kilmuir, over comments about an Eden press conference in Rome in his account of the Conservative government and Europe in the early 1950s, or against an LSE historian (F.S. Northedge) writing a book about interwar British foreign policy (‘I would gladly sue him if I could’, fumed Eden), were an over-reaction. Eden would arrange for friends to write to the press about or pen critical reviews of offending books and authors. He was preoccupied – obsessed – with the verdict of history, as Peter Beck shows, and with sustaining ‘the Eden legend’. Towards the end of his life, when Lord Bethell published a book in 1974 about the forced repatriation of Russians captured in the German army, containing strong criticisms of Eden, he was deeply hurt by the ensuing controversy but kept his silence.38 Suez and Nasser haunted Eden in his retirement. He felt the events of 1967 and the Six Day War vindicated him and showed his actions in 1956 had been justified. But someone who saw him shortly before his death felt he was ‘consumed deep down by the sorrowful knowledge that history would not treat him with kindness’. When the journalist Henry Brandon met him in the autumn of 1976, he found Eden still ‘presenting his case as he saw it … The ghost of Suez was still stalking Eden as he was getting ready for the end and wondering about the verdict of history.’39 The Edens would make annual visits to Paris, staying at the British embassy, visiting the galleries, buying pictures and books, and lunching privately with the De Gaulles at the Elysée. Remembering his crucial support during the war, the General always treated Eden, who was a lifelong Francophile, as ‘a major political figure as well as a valued friend’, would discuss the world scene with him (they shared a distrust of US policies), and always urged him to return to political life.40 It was rather different back in Britain where Eden’s political role after 1957 was minimal and the Conservative high command relieved he was out of it. As Carlton puts it: ‘During the two decades of his retirement Avon




clearly had little influence on the course of events. His successors in Downing Street did not see him as an elder statesman to be constantly consulted and the managers of the Conservative Party made little attempt to associate him with their proceedings and campaigns.’ His views on the Conservative governments of Macmillan and Home, says Carlton, were not particularly favourable, and having been a Tory progressive in the past, he was, if anything, now somewhat to the right of them in his private views and outlook. Macmillan he plainly mistrusted, harbouring resentments about his conduct during the Suez crisis and his ruthless manoeuvring to seize the crown. ‘He should have been a cardinal in the Middle Ages’, he said, ‘under a strong Pope.’ In 1959 Eden refused to issue a statement endorsing Macmillan personally as prime minister and – despite being pressed hard by his successor – would issue a statement of support only for the Conservative Party. In 1962 his criticism of Macmillan’s sacking of Selwyn Lloyd, his Chancellor of the Exchequer, who he felt was being made the scapegoat for wider government failings, received widespread coverage in the press. Lloyd was ‘a useful stick to beat Harold [Macmillan] with’, Clarissa Eden told a friend. In the 1963 Tory leadership contest he preferred (in order) Hailsham, Douglas-Home, and Maudling. He now had no time for Butler, saying he could not respect him and disliked his lack of ‘faith’ and consistency.41 In 1961 there had been – to put it kindly – crossed wires, or – seen in another light – the sort of calculated insult only possible with the British honours system, when Eden contacted Macmillan saying he had decided to go to the Lords after all, and the prime minister said he would be happy to recommend him for a Viscountcy. It was soon sorted out and Eden got the then-customary Earldom. He did not in fact attend the Lords all that frequently and never felt at home or made a mark there. Between October 1961 and March 1974 he made ten speeches there on foreign policy and international questions, including major speeches on NATO, the Middle East, the 1968 Czech crisis, and South-East Asia. In 1962 he set out at length his views on the Common Market application, stressing the need to safeguard Commonwealth interests, highlighting implications for the agricultural support system, and raising a concern about the long-term issues of federalism and political integration. Contrary to his views in office, he now accepted Britain should join the EEC but was never a Euro-enthusiast.42 Outside the political sphere Eden’s retirement was, says Richard Thorpe, ‘fulfilling and varied’.43 He enjoyed living as a country gentleman in Wiltshire, where he had some success breeding pedigree Hereford cattle. For the sake of his health he would go to the West Indies each winter, owning homes first on the island of Bequia and then on Barbados. He was an active president of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre 1958–66 (he compares with Neville Chamberlain in his knowledge of and love for Shakespeare), and was Chancellor of Birmingham University until 1973. His health was variable and he needed nine major internal operations. But he achieved a real con-



164 After Number 10

tentment in retirement that he had found elusive when he was an active politician. Not the least reason was his happy marriage to Clarissa Eden, his second wife, who was Churchill’s niece, whom he had married in 1952. Eden spent the last three winters of his life in Florida, the guest of his friends Averell and Pamela Harriman. When he fell seriously ill there at the end of 1976 and cancer of the liver was diagnosed, the prime minister, James Callaghan, made available an RAF plane to fly the dying former prime minister home. Eden died aged 79 on 14 January 1977 at his home Alvediston Manor in Wiltshire and was buried in the local churchyard.

Harold Macmillan (resigned 18 October 1963) ‘Life after death’ was what Harold Macmillan used to call his postpremiership, referring back to his resignation from office as ‘my death’ or ‘when I died’. He had been prime minister for six years and nine months when he left office on 18 October 1963. He was 69 years old and lived another 23 years, towards the end of which there was, as one biographer says, a sort of extraordinary ‘political rebirth’ or ‘resurrection’. It is arguable that the long years of retirement were required fully to develop and polish Macmillan’s reputation as a statesman and sage, a reputation that stood higher in 1986, when he died, than in 1963.44 Macmillan had joked to his press secretary in March 1960 about going on until he was 80. However, he was always conscious Churchill had stayed too long and of the danger of becoming what he called ‘the old limpet’. Feeling the burdens of office and troubled by old war wounds, he had told the Queen in October 1960 he might have to resign and, after being ill in June 1961 with a virus and starting to feel his age, he ended the year depressed and seriously contemplating resignation.45 He recovered and kept going until 1963 but – battered by events and with his reputation starting to crumble – he seems to have edged towards a decision over that summer that it was time to go. He told the Queen on 20 September he would announce there would not be a general election that year and he would not lead the Conservative Party at the election, thinking he might step down in January 1964. Then, he changed his mind and on 7 October told the Cabinet he had decided to stay on. But the very next day, on the eve of the party conference, he fell ill and, in severe pain, had to be taken to hospital for a prostate operation. He then decided to quit. It has sometimes been suggested he thought (wrongly) he had cancer and might die, but his doctors had reassured him and did not advise him to resign. It was probably more the case that, indecisive and wavering about resignation, he seized on a medical bolt from the blue to provide and rationalise the exit he had been looking for. Having told the Queen on 9 October 1963 of his intention to resign, Macmillan – from hospital – spent the period until he left office




on 18 October ordering soundings of party opinion and unscrupulously manipulating procedures to manage the succession. He was determined to block R.A. Butler and seems to have ‘switched horses’ at an early stage, abandoning his early support for Lord Hailsham and seizing on Lord Home as the best person to unite the party. In an unprecedented fashion monarch went to prime minister rather than the other way round, and he formally resigned from his hospital bed before reading out a memorandum he had prepared, advising her to send for Home. Macmillan’s role in the choice of his successor was subsequently criticised, and the controversy his Machiavellian wire-pulling triggered drove the Conservative Party in 1965 to adopt rules by which MPs would elect its leaders. Macmillan had moreover ‘bounced’ the Queen into accepting his choice of successor – she took advice from no one else and from someone who was, when he gave it, no longer prime minister. He always insisted he wanted to preserve the royal prerogative power over the choice of a premier, but in practice undermined it. Macmillan soon recovered from his illness and operation and, finding retirement boring and frustrating, regretted he had resigned. He respected and liked Alec Home but after the Conservatives’ defeat in 1964 came to realise he had opted for the wrong man and that Butler might have been a better choice as an election-winner. He spoke only three more times in the House of Commons, joining in tributes after the assassination of President Kennedy and on Churchill’s retirement, and speaking in the debate on the Denning Report on the Profumo affair in December 1963. His decision to leave the Commons at the general election was announced in February 1964. He came in for some press criticism when it was reported he had been offered but declined both an earldom and the Order of the Garter. His own resignation honours list had raised eyebrows with – shades of Disraeli and Monty Corry – its peerage for John Wyndham, his private secretary in Number 10, and an unprecedented number of baronetcies and knighthoods for other close aides. Partly he did not, it seems, want to damage the longerterm political prospects of his son, Maurice, an MP since 1955 and now starting his ministerial career in Home’s government, though he could have disclaimed any title under the Peerage Act. Partly he did not hold the House of Lords in high esteem – it was ‘a place for politicians put out to grass’, it was ‘not worth belonging to’, as he once said. And partly he wanted to keep open the option of a political come-back and a return to office – perhaps as prime minister, perhaps as an elder statesman like Balfour, in some sort of coalition or ‘National’ government. He stayed plain Mr Macmillan. In 1976 he accepted the Order of Merit, which he is held to have prized above all other honours, though there are suggestions the Queen, irritated by his refusal of honours, kept him waiting for this distinction.46 Lady Dorothy Macmillan died suddenly in May 1966. Her long affair with Bob Boothby, starting in the later-1920s but unknown to the wider



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public until after Harold Macmillan’s death, had virtually wrecked their marriage, but she had played the dutiful political wife, had been supportive of him in office, and while they lived somewhat separate lives there had been benign warmth in their later years together. Macmillan was left despondent and lonelier than ever after her death, prone to bouts of depression, and living a rather solitary life at Birch Grove (his house in Sussex), with forays into London clubland and to Oxford. He seems to have developed a close and affectionate relationship with Eileen O’Casey, widow of the Irish playwright Sean O’Casey (a Macmillan author), but rumours they might marry came to nothing. There were other family bereavements: the Macmillan’s youngest daughter (Boothby was probably her father), Sarah, was an alcoholic who died aged 40 in 1970; and Maurice Macmillan fought alcoholism and ill-health before pre-deceasing his father in 1984. The death in 1972 of John Wyndham (Lord Egremont) was a grievous blow. He was able to go back into the family publishing business, in which he had worked earlier in his career, playing an active role as chairman of the company (1964–67 and 1970–74) and later as its first president. He oversaw changes in management and organisation, a move to new premises, and a major international expansion – Macmillan himself travelled a great deal to promote sales – and growth of the business. In his official biography Alistair Horne describes Macmillan as ‘a millionaire publisher, author and landowner’. But his fortune and his tax affairs were so carefully arranged within the family that when he died his will for probate totalled only £37,000.47 He had been elected Chancellor of Oxford University in 1960 and, in retirement was active in that role and took it seriously, with frequent visits to the university and its colleges, dinners, speeches and award ceremonies. He mesmerised dons and students alike and was an effective fund-raiser. The writing of his memoirs also kept Macmillan occupied. Originally planned as three volumes they eventually appeared in six, totalling nearly 4,000 pages and two million words, between 1966 and 1973. He admitted to making some mistakes, saying the 1962 ‘night of the long knives’ mass Cabinet sackings were ‘a serious error’ and that he could have handled some aspects of the Profumo affair better. Drawing extensively on his private diaries and on documents from his time in office, they are a massively detailed and rather ponderous account, in which he revealed little of himself. Had he not been his own publisher they would probably have been scaled down. They sold well but critics often found them uneven and dull; Enoch Powell memorably described reading them as ‘akin to … chewing cardboard’.48 Later, he published Past Masters (1975), a short and readable set of political portraits and reflections covering the 1906–39 period and his illuminating Mediterranean War Diaries (1984). In a survey in 1975, more than ten years after he had left power, 26 per cent of respondents thought Macmillan was dead. He was in fact in his old




age developing into something of a ‘national treasure’, as Colin Matthew noted, regarded with growing respect and affection. Some of his reputation was down to his clever showmanship, to the witty, learned, urbane and nostalgic speeches and conversation, and to the skilfully deceptive and show stealing ‘old-man act’ he developed. Successful television appearances and interviews, timed to coincide with the appearance of each volume of his memoirs, were important in the rediscovery of Macmillan. There was a sense, as time passed and perspectives lengthened on his years in power, and as his successors struggled with and were defeated by the problems facing the country, of the ‘old pro’, the ‘old master’ or the ‘old entertainer’ being seen in a new light.49 ‘Without membership of either house of parliament, Macmillan’s political presence after 1964 was at best marginal’, argues Colin Matthew. ‘He assisted behind the scenes, but effectively ceased to be a force in national politics.’ His first plunge back into public political controversy came in 1975, when he denounced Labour’s calling of the Common Market referendum and spoke out for the pro-European cause. But the idea of a return to the political stage one day in an all-party coalition seems to have been in his mind almost as soon as he left Number 10. In October 1964 in Liverpool he quipped he was making his last speech from a political platform, ‘unless I have to come out again to put it right’. In 1965 he was speculating with a group of his former aides that a coalition government might be the best way of tackling the country’s economic problems, and he might then come back: ‘he could take a life peerage which could be arranged in a matter of hours’. The defeat of the Heath government (Macmillan thought its confrontations with the miners union were ‘bungling’ – ‘he had fought with miners in the trenches’, he said, ‘and they never gave in’) and the election of a weak Labour government in 1974 gave added force to his conviction a coalition national government was needed to save the country from collapse or extremism. He considered standing for parliament as a national candidate in the October 1974 general election, and visited Eden to ask him to back his return to politics in a coalition. He used a TV interview in October 1976 to call for a government of national unity. Asked who could lead it, he replied: ‘Mr Gladstone formed his last Government when he was eighty-three. I’m only eighty-two. You mustn’t put temptation in my way.’ Mrs Thatcher was dismayed and immediately made known her view that the answer to Britain’s problems was the election of a Conservative government.50 Macmillan was initially delighted when Thatcher replaced Heath as Tory leader in 1975. Heath, he liked to say, had been ‘a very good No. 2’ but was not an effective leader and his decade in charge of the party had been disastrous. He admired Thatcher’s courage, resolution and drive. She sought his advice before and after she became prime minister, consulting him during the Falklands campaign about how to organise a War Cabinet and run a war. He campaigned for the party during the 1979 election, appearing in



168 After Number 10

a party-political broadcast. But from the start he had his doubts and there were clear political differences between them. In a February 1979 TV interview he continued to drop hints about a government of national unity, harked back to the period of Keynesian consensus politics and expressed doubts about monetarism and Conservative economic policy. He let it be known that he was deeply worried by Keith Joseph’s doctrinaire ideas and the ‘extremism’ of the Left being matched by that of the Right, arguing Conservatives should occupy the middle ground. He described Thatcher as ‘a brilliant tyrant surrounded by mediocrities’, deploring the zeal and narrowness of her ‘conviction’ leadership and loftily advising her not to try to do too much and to read as much Jane Austen as possible. He rocked the boat with his comments that inflation was ‘the mark of a rising civilisation’, his criticisms of deflationary policies and high unemployment, and his calls for cooperation between industry and unions, calling for a sort of ‘industrial parliament’ – all showed his growing dissatisfaction and opposition to the direction in which Thatcher was taking her party and the country.51 With his great eye for the dramatic gesture he then decided to accept an Earldom in February 1984 on his ninetieth birthday. The Queen and Mrs Thatcher had been pressing him to accept a peerage and, bored, unable to read because of failing eyesight, and no longer worried about his son’s political career, he seized a last chance to strut the political stage. ‘In the House of Lords it really doesn’t matter if you’re blind … or deaf or dumb’, he remarked. He joked to Ted Heath he did not know on which side of the chamber he was going to sit and, once installed as the Earl of Stockton, he attended regularly and proceeded to make a number of witty, theatrical, memorable and politically mischievous speeches attacking the ‘barren’ economic and social policies and philosophy of the Thatcher government.52 In a speech to the Tory Reform Group in November 1985 he likened privatisation to ‘selling the family silver’. While Opposition Labour peers cheered his performances in the Lords, Thatcher and her supporters did not hide their irritation and scorn. The right-wing press now labelled him as outof-date, quasi-socialist and someone who had been a bad prime minister, sharing responsibility for creating the problems Thatcher was sorting out. There were no more political curtain calls. Although his mind and his stiletto were as sharp as ever, he was getting very frail. He was virtually blind, suffering from pleurisy, shingles and gout, and in July 1986 was ill with pneumonia. He died at Birch Grove after a short illness on 29 December 1986, six weeks short of his 93rd birthday, and was buried in the parish churchyard of Horsted Keynes, nearby in West Sussex.

Alec Douglas-Home (left office 16 0ctober 1964) Alec Douglas-Home had been prime minister for just 362 days when, after the Conservatives’ narrow defeat in the 1964 general election, he left office




on 16 October 1964, slipping quietly out of the garden gate at the back of Number 10 with his suitcases as crowds cheered the victorious Harold Wilson arriving at the front door. Somewhat like Balfour, Douglas-Home’s time as prime minister was a short and unsuccessful interlude in a longer ministerial and political career, which in his case continued with frontbench posts for another decade until he finally retired from full-time active politics in 1974. Home was modest, decent and amiable, often caricatured as a tweedy aristocratic amateur, but his political career spanned over 40 years and he should not be underestimated as one of the ‘great survivors’ of British politics. Although he had a ‘hinterland’, a happy family life, a love of county pursuits, great estates and wealth (inheriting 100,000 acres when he became the 14th Earl of Home and estimated to be a millionaire when he became PM), he was for all his charm a shrewd and tough political operator – ‘iron painted to look like wood’, as Macmillan said of him.53 A ‘Jak’ cartoon in the Evening Standard of 17 October 1964 showed Douglas-Home and Nikita Khrushchev, overthrown as Soviet leader on 15 October, shotguns under their arms, heading off side-by-side to the grouse moors. But whereas Khrushchev had no choice but to live quietly in retirement, watched over by the KGB, Douglas-Home, then aged 61, had no intention of quitting politics. A ‘Vicky’ cartoon a week later – ‘Don’t shoot the pianist, he’s doing his best’ – showed grim-faced leading Tories looking on as a hapless Douglas-Home hammered away discordantly at his five-finger exercises. He was not the man to find a new tune for a party unhappily returned to the uncertainties of opposition after 13 years in power. No match for the quick-witted and tactically-adroit new prime minister, who completely outclassed him as a House of Commons and television performer, Douglas-Home was soon being described by Labour Cabinet minister Richard Crossman as ‘totally ineffective as Leader of the Opposition’ and as ‘our asset’. His wife, many of his friends, and a majority of Tory voters wanted him to continue as leader but his heart was not in it and he was not willing to fight to keep the position. ‘Factious opposition does not come easily to me’, he privately admitted. He was reluctant to go immediately and wanted to leave at a time of his own choosing.54 Addressing the problems of democracy and legitimacy that had surrounded his own emergence as party leader, Douglas-Home oversaw the introduction of new procedures in February 1965 by which future leaders would be elected by Tory MPs. Had he immediately put himself up for election he would have probably won the ballot, in the absence at that stage of a clear successor, and bought more time for his leadership. In policy terms there were two important steps in his time at the helm: the commitment to seek EEC entry was repeated, and a wide-ranging policy review process was set up, directed by Edward Heath, the powerful Shadow Chancellor. However, discontent built up within the party with calls for more robust



170 After Number 10

leadership and suggestions of a covert campaign to force him out, involving Heathites, if not Heath himself. As rumours, plotting and press speculation continued, Douglas-Home declared in June 1965 he would be carrying on, but then Wilson’s announcement there would be no general election that year made him more vulnerable still by giving time for any new leader to settle in before facing the voters. Douglas-Home’s position collapsed quickly. Criticism in the Tory press increased and the Conservatives, and Douglas-Home personally compared with Wilson, fell further behind in the opinion polls. An attempt by disgruntled backbenchers to move against him, in the guise of a call for a ‘debate’ on the leadership, at the 1922 Committee was headed-off, but the writing was on the wall and, tired and depressed, he decided to stand down while he could do so with dignity rather than be forced out in a putsch. He announced his resignation as party leader on 22 July 1965. His playwright brother, William, later insisted ‘the Tories sacked my brother’, saying ‘suicide’ might have been written on his political death certificate but it was ‘murder none the less’. The biographers of Willie Whitelaw, then the Tory Chief Whip, termed it a ‘mercykilling’.55 He had been Leader of the Opposition for only nine months. Douglas-Home was reluctant to go but the way in which he accepted the inevitable without a fuss and without public bitterness or rancour greatly enhanced his reputation and was a key factor in allowing him to carve out a constructive post-leadership role. After 1965 Douglas-Home went on to provide a model of dignified, loyal and supportive behaviour towards all his successors as Conservative leader. When their turn to quit the leadership came, not all of them were willing or able to be so magnanimous and follow his example. He backed Heath for the leadership and then served in his shadow Cabinet, first as External Affairs spokesman and from April 1966 as Foreign Affairs spokesman, his responsibilities overlapping with those of Reginald Maudling, the Deputy Leader, who also took charge of Commonwealth and Colonial affairs and overseas development.56 He travelled widely in this role but found time to serve as president of the MCC 1966–67 and was caught up in the D’Oliveira affair and the controversies over cricket, South Africa and apartheid. Douglas-Home and Heath worked well together, first in opposition (1965–70) and then in government (1970–74), though Douglas-Home was from a different wing of the party and never part of the Heathite inner circle. Where Heath was a modernising technocrat, Douglas-Home had more right-wing instincts. He sympathised with Enoch Powell’s views on cutting immigration and believed ‘the best government was the least government’. An often under-fire Heath found Douglas-Home’s loyalty invaluable, as he ‘placed his own authority and party influence between Mr Heath and any critics there might be’. When Heath shocked Scottish Tories by backing devolution in 1968, Home was given the job of chairing a commission that produced a plan for an elected Scottish convention,




later pigeon-holed when the party returned to office. Douglas-Home was revered in the wider Conservative party and so reassured party traditionalists. As the mantle of elder statesman slipped onto his shoulders, ‘his appearance at each year’s party conference’, comments Douglas Hurd, ‘was greeted with tumultuous applause, in which guilt mingled with affection.’57 ‘I shall go on for as long as I am wanted’, he said in an interview two months before the 1970 general election. ‘I don’t put any term to that. Then I shall have other things to do.’ The widespread assumption that the Conservatives would lose that election led to secret plans being hatched by senior figures to bring back Douglas-Home as a temporary stand-in or caretaker leader to block an Enoch Powell take-over of the party in the aftermath of Heath being forced out after another general election defeat. However, when Heath unexpectedly won, Douglas-Home returned to the job he had first done ten years earlier and became Foreign Secretary. He wanted the job and, given his status and experience, it would have been difficult to deny him it. Maudling might have had a claim to that office but became Home Secretary instead, his coolness towards Europe perhaps being an additional consideration for Heath. There seems to have been an expectation that after 12 or 18 months or so Douglas-Home would retire and hand over to someone else, but he stayed in post throughout the life of the government, apparently rebuffing an attempt in 1973 to persuade him to move to the Scottish Office.58 Aged 67 in 1970 Douglas-Home was the oldest and most experienced member of Heath’s Cabinet. He seemed more at home and more assured in the Foreign Office than he had ever done at Number 10. While Heath prioritised and pursued his European ambitions, Douglas-Home concentrated more on relations with the United States (he was highly regarded in Washington DC and got on well with Nixon and Kissinger), on EastWest relations, on the Commonwealth, and on Rhodesia. He was a strong, respected and relatively independent figure at the Foreign Office, but only rarely intervened on other policy issues, though in 1972 he argued privately to Heath we should ‘start to push’ the people of Northern Ireland towards a united Ireland, fearing otherwise London might be stuck with directly governing the province permanently. Although not passionately pro-European he supported EEC entry, believing there was no realistic alternative if Britain were to remain a major power, and chaired the Cabinet’s European Policy Committee. He was content to play second fiddle to Heath on the strategy and gave a free hand to Geoffrey Rippon on the detailed entry negotiations.59 He was a tough’ Cold Warrior’, concerned about the communist threat and believing the Russians would always take advantage of Western weakness, and in 1971 ordered the expulsion from Britain of 105 Soviet ‘diplomats’ and spies. Relations with Moscow subsequently recovered after a rocky spell and Douglas-Home made an official visit there at the end of 1973.



172 After Number 10

The Douglas-Home/Heath relationship has been described as ‘cordial and effective’. Heath later wrote in his memoirs he was ‘served loyally and supremely well by Alec Douglas-Home as Foreign Secretary’. There were few issues on which they differed. At the time of the 1971 India-Pakistan war Heath was more concerned to improve British relations with India while Douglas-Home agreed more with the Americans in supporting Pakistan and seeing India as the aggressor. Later Heath wanted a European response to the Yom Kippur War while his Foreign Secretary sought to keep in step with the Americans but the government fell before this incipient rift could develop into a big problem.60 Dealing with issues such as arms sales to South Africa and Rhodesia involved trying to balance pressures from the right of the Tory and liberal opinion at home and in the Commonwealth. Douglas-Home’s personal sympathies were often more with the former group, and he was anxious to keep the lid on any right-wing explosions or rebellions. He got off to a bad start with a poor performance in the Commons when announcing the resumption of arms sales to South Africa in 1970, and there was a furore in the Commonwealth. In 1966 he had argued that ‘majority rule in Rhodesia today or tomorrow would bring collapse and ruin’, and he felt Wilson’s insistence on ‘no independence before majority rule’ was a ‘terrible mistake’, but worked hard to resolve the problem, holding talks in Rhodesia with Ian Smith, leader of the white rebel UDI regime there, and hammering out a settlement. However, the details of that agreement and the timetable envisaged for the eventual transition to majority rule – estimates varied from ten to 100 years – meant it would never be acceptable to the black African population, as the Pearce Commission soon discovered to Home’s disappointment. The situation there was too far gone for Douglas-Home’s preferred ‘[African] foot in the door … second best … take it gradually’ approach to stand a realistic chance of working.61 Douglas-Home had decided to bow out and leave the Commons at the end of the 1970 parliament (which could have run up to June 1975) but when Heath called a snap election in February 1974 (a decision he opposed), he fought his seat again and, following the Conservatives’ defeat, became shadow Foreign Secretary. On 22 March 1974 he announced he would not be seeking re-election and so left the Commons when parliament was dissolved again and Wilson called another election in October 1974. In November he became the first former prime minister to go to the House of Lords with a life peerage (a baronage), as Lord Home of the Hirsel. He had given up an ancient hereditary title, as the Fourteenth Earl of Home, to become prime minister, being known 1963–74 as Sir Alec Douglas-Home because he had been awarded the Order of the Thistle in 1962. He later said he would not have dreamt of renouncing his title in 1963 if he had had to give it up for his family forever, and if his son had not been able to resume the title if he wished to do so.62




Home chaired the committee set up in November 1974 which came up with a way for the party to challenge and remove unpopular Conservative leaders who would not go of their own volition. The new provision for annual contests and for the winner to have a 15 per cent margin of all those entitled to vote provided the mechanism by which first Heath and later Thatcher were brought down. The new rules were sometimes called ‘Alec’s revenge’. Labour leader Harold Wilson had told an adviser in March 1974 that Home, and especially Lady Home, wanted Heath out from the leadership – ‘He is like me’, Wilson claimed. ‘He wants revenge.’ But, for Home, ever the loyal servant of the Conservative Party, it was politics, not personal. Home was loyal to Heath but recognised that, as a general election loser and after the failure of his government, ‘the Party will not have Ted’.63 Home thought Heath did not handle his own eviction from power and political afterlife well: ‘it’s such a waste’, he commented in 1988, ‘I always liked him very much … He mucked it all up. You must not allow yourself to have a vendetta, particularly with a woman.’ As Dutton says, Home ‘quickly rallied’ to Mrs Thatcher once she became leader. She once gushed he was ‘the wisest man I have ever met’ and, inexperienced herself in foreign affairs when she became opposition leader, she frequently turned to him for advice and views on international issues. She appointed him to chair a Conservative Party committee on reform of the House of Lords, whose report in 1978 recommended a part-elected upper house to act as a stronger constitutional safeguard. Nothing came of it after the Conservatives returned to power. As a committed devolutionist, he was unhappy with Thatcher’s handling of the issue and backpedalling, which provoked some frontbench resignations in 1976, but in February 1979 he made a controversial intervention in the run-up to the referendum on Scottish devolution with a speech urging voters to reject Labour’s proposals and vote ‘no’ in the interests of producing better legislation ‘to get the matter right’. The speech is credited with helping to swing votes in a close result but the promised ‘better bill’ did not materialise after the Conservatives took office. Home, says Thorpe, was ‘unrepentant, but his enthusiasm for Thatcher cooled somewhat in the aftermath of the 1979 election’.64 In 1976 he had published his autobiography, The Way The Wind Blows, a slight and anecdotal book that yielded more insights into the author’s character and country interests than his political career. It sold rather well. R.A. Butler mocked it as ‘this book on fishing’. But as Dutton says about his memoirs, ‘they are far removed from the turgid exercises in self-justification offered by many of Home’s political contemporaries’. In Letters to a Grandson (1983) he combined a brief survey of British foreign policy with personal reflections on diplomacy and foreign affairs, particularly about dealing with the Russians. Border Reflections (1979) ‘reveals his passion for wildlife’, notes Dutton, ‘particularly killing it’.65



174 After Number 10

Home regularly attended and was active in the House of Lords, speaking particularly on foreign policy. His last major speech was in December 1989 when he spoke against prosecuting war criminals resident in Britain, but as the years went on he spent more and more time in Scotland in contented retirement. He remained the wise elder statesman figure – kept in the picture by Number 10 during the 1982 Falklands War and by Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd during the first Gulf War 1990–91, continuing to take an interest in politics – but gradually faded from view. In September 1990 Home’s wife died and a couple of months later he had a stroke from which he made a slow recovery. He never went to London again, living for the last five years of his life as a semi-invalid at the Hirsel. He died, aged 92, of bronchopneumonia on 9 October 1995. ‘Few former prime ministers were so untarnished by fame, loyal to their successors or oblivious to station as Alec Home’, was Richard Thorpe’s verdict. Ted Heath told the story of the high-level British turnout for De Gaulle’s funeral service at Notre Dame in 1970, a group including the Prince of Wales, the serving PM (Heath) and Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, and Harold Wilson. Would Home like to come too? ‘Oh, I don’t think so, thank you’, he replied, ‘With all those former prime ministers you don’t need your Foreign Secretary.’ ‘But you are a former prime minister yourself’, replied Heath. ‘So, I am’, laughed Home. ‘I’d quite forgotten.’66 Home’s reputation rests more on what he did before and after he became prime minister rather than on anything he did as prime minister. None of his successors in Number 10 have (to date) gone back into government. That he was able to do so was because of his private and public character, his age and health when he left the premiership, and circumstances. Had he had a longer stint in Number 10 (and the 1964 defeat was narrow) he may not have wanted nor been able to stay in frontbench politics after finally leaving the premiership, though the when and how he would have left might have been important factors. If Heath had lost in 1970 and Labour remained in power, he may have been too old to return to office when the Tories next formed a government and might then have just gone quietly to the House of Lords. There was, in other words, nothing inevitable about Home’s political afterlife as a former prime minister. That he was an understated and underestimated figure probably helped rather than hindered him in his rise to the very top and in playing a useful continuing role after his short time there.




8

Edward Heath (left office 4 March 1974) In the 11 months between resigning as prime minister on 4 March 1974 and standing down as leader of the Conservative Party on 4 February 1975, Edward Heath was the political equivalent of those cartoon characters who run off the edge of a cliff but do not realise there is nothing between their feet and the ground except a thousand feet of thin air. Although he was determined to carry on, he was not going to be able to defy the laws of gravity and escape the fate of other unsuccessful premiers and party leaders. Heath was described as being in a ‘rather catatonic state’ after losing office in 1974, but he soon recovered his self-belief and resilience, or, as his enemies would say, his arrogance and stubbornness. This year was his annus horriblis, in which he lost the premiership and two general elections, was challenged for the party leadership, and had his yacht, Morning Cloud III, sunk in a storm. He had nowhere to live after leaving Number 10 – he had given up his Albany apartment in 1970 – and for a few months camped out in his parliamentary private secretary’s small flat overlooking Vauxhall Bridge. He then moved to a house in Belgravia at which the IRA launched a bomb attack just before Christmas. To cap it all he was throughout this period suffering from a thyroid deficiency, probably affecting him from late 1973 onwards, but not diagnosed until 1975. The illness adversely affected his energy, temper and judgement.1 Heath had been prime minister for just 44 months (1970–74). His premiership ended in failure, frustration and electoral defeat against a background of economic crisis and industrial conflict. Calling and losing a general election in February 1974, 15 months before he needed to, fuelled doubts about his political judgment and electoral appeal. When the outcome was a hung parliament, his trying and failing to stay in power by seeking to form a coalition with the Liberals – their insistence on electoral reform was an insurmountable stumbling block – gave the impression he 176



Heath to Callaghan

was a bad loser, seeking to cling to office. There was growing unhappiness among Tory MPs with his leadership: immediately after the February election around 100 (a third of the party) were reported as wanting him to step down sooner or later. He had been an abrasive, confrontational and polarising prime minister, and the switch in the second general election of 1974 (held in October) to calling for a coalition government of national unity failed to convince the voters. While Labour squeaked back with only a tiny majority, the Conservatives fell further back, losing 20 more seats and 1.3 million votes, compared with February. Having now lost three of the four general elections he had fought as party leader, it was obvious to virtually everyone except Heath himself that he was an electoral liability and would have to go. As one of his close Number 10 aides, Douglas Hurd, recalled, his decision to stay on as party leader after the October 1974 defeat ‘made no sense, even to his friends … He could then have stepped down with dignity. Instead he resisted in futile defiance.’2 The party had no formal mechanism to remove an incumbent leader and, in the face of pressure from the backbench 1922 Committee, Heath was forced to invite Alec Douglas-Home to chair a committee to propose new rules that would create the opportunity to challenge and remove him. Had Heath resigned voluntarily, the likelihood is that one of his supporters such as Willie Whitelaw or Jim Prior would have succeeded to the Tory leadership. But his intransigence meant they held back and the conditions were created under which demoralised and desperate backbenchers turned to an outsider like Mrs Thatcher – whom Heath himself did not take seriously – whose challenge was expected only to damage or dislodge him and open up the leadership contest to other more heavyweight candidates. Some Tories wanted simply to be rid of Heath; others wanted a change of ideological direction. Heath’s campaign was shambolic while Thatcher’s was run with rat-like cunning. The result was that, having outpolled him on the first ballot (by 130 to 119 votes – upon which he immediately resigned), she built up such a momentum that she proved uncatchable. After his eviction from the leadership in 1975, when he was 58 years old, Heath spent another 26 years in the House of Commons, becoming Father of the House in 1992 and the oldest-sitting MP, and finally leaving parliament in 2001 when he was almost 85. This record of House of Commons service after being prime minister was longer than anyone else, exceeding Lloyd George’s 22 years in the Commons after Number 10 and Balfour’s 16 years as an MP after losing the premiership. More than half of Heath’s total time as an MP – he was first elected in 1950 – was clocked up after he lost his posts of national and then party leadership. He remained a regular Commons attender, prominent in the front-row seat below the gangway that Churchill had occupied, and developing into a better, more relaxed and funnier speaker, and one whom MPs would rush to listen to, after his



Heath to Callaghan 177

overthrow than he had been before, and he remained active in his Bexley and Sidcup constituency. The Spectator named him ‘parliamentarian of the year’ in 1988. He never considered going to the House of Lords. ‘Delightful place’, he once said of it. ‘Charming people. With whom I’ve absolutely nothing in common.’ Moving to ‘the other place’ would have signalled he accepted his political career was over, and he would not do that. Moreover, he could never have accepted an honour from his hated supplanter, Thatcher.3 Wilson had offered to nominate him for a CH in 1974, but he had refused. He finally accepted the Order of the Garter and became Sir Edward Heath only in 1992, which was after two prime ministers who left Number 10 after him – Wilson and Callaghan – had become KGs, as well as two of his own Cabinet ministers – Lords Carrington and Hailsham. By tradition former prime ministers from the time of Lloyd George onwards are commemorated with a stained glass window with their coat of arms at Chequers; for many years there was a space reserved for Heath but – perhaps again reluctant to acknowledge he would not be back – his window was not finally installed until 1994, 20 years after he left office. Heath showed he was still capable of constructive political work in his role in the ‘yes’ campaign in the 1975 Common Market referendum and later on the Brandt Commission on international development issues. Douglas Hurd described the referendum campaign as ‘the last happy episode in Heath’s political career’. Mrs Thatcher took a back seat, and he was the leading Conservative pro-EEC campaigner, speaking with passion and conviction up and down the country, and being credited with playing a key role in the ‘yes’ victory. He was invited to serve on the Brandt Commission in 1977 and – though he had up till then showed little interest in the Third World – quickly emerged as one of its dominant members, helping to pull its (1980) report on ‘North-South’ problems together. He mastered the issues with impressive thoroughness and found the call for international governmental action to tackle the problems of the world’s poor to be a good stick with which to beat the neo-liberal free-marketeers in power in Britain and the USA. Heath joined in a backbench revolt against cuts in the aid budget in 1984 and attacked the decision to pull out of UNESCO.4 But his root-and-branch, highly vocal and personalised criticisms of his successor and her government, sustained through her tenure, and beyond, left him increasingly isolated in his own party and were self-defeating, costing him any influence he may have been able to exert as an elder statesman and party grandee. Critics talked about ‘the longest sulk in parliamentary history’. But Heath seemed to see himself more as a ‘prophet in the wilderness’, like Churchill in the 1930s. ‘Unlike previous prime ministers – but like Thatcher herself after 1990 – he did not retire gracefully’, says Dennis Kavanagh. ‘He was Mr Angry rather than a dignified elder statesman.’5



178 After Number 10

Heath wrote in his memoirs that had Whitelaw been elected Tory leader in succession to him he was sure he could have served under him, as Douglas-Home had under Heath himself. ‘It was long the custom’, he argued, citing the 20th century precedents, ‘that former leaders wishing to remain in politics should be immediately offered a top position.’ ‘That tradition’, he continued, with a swipe at an unnamed Thatcher, ‘was later abandoned.’ He claimed that at the end of 1974 Airey Neave, who later became Mrs Thatcher’s campaign manager, pressed him to resign, saying he was in a position to guarantee he would be given ‘a top job’ in the Shadow Cabinet or in a Conservative government. But Heath rejected any covert deal.6 ‘They are absolutely mad to get rid of me, absolutely mad’, Heath had declared when his MPs gave him the political thumbs down, adding ‘I’m in reserve.’ He did not think he was politically dead and was determined to stay in parliament. ‘You never know what might happen in politics’, he told an interviewer in 1977. Campbell describes him in the late-1970s as ‘confident that one way or another he would soon be recalled to the country’s, if not necessarily the party’s colours’. He gave short shrift to suggestions he might take up a European job in Brussels or stand for election to the European Parliament. If there had been an SDP breakthrough in the early 1980s he would probably have been willing to go into a coalition government with Roy Jenkins. He would have done so as a middle ground Tory – he was never tempted into joining the SDP.7 ‘Heath’s resentment against Thatcher prevented him from playing a useful political role during the rest of his life’, says Douglas Hurd. At general elections he always campaigned vigorously for the Conservative Party, but disagreed strongly with the policies and philosophy of her government, calling her monetarist economic policy ‘catastrophic’, and attacking other policies and initiatives virtually across the board: on rising unemployment, industry, privatisation, the trade unions, local government, the poll tax, the health service, Europe, and what he called ‘kowtow[ing] to the United States’. As the party changed around him, he fumed about ‘unappealing representatives’ and ‘right-wing whipper-snappers’ on the Tory backbenches, with their ‘hardline’ views. When he denounced Thatcher’s Bruges speech, he was booed at the party conference and faced placards reading ‘Judas Heath’. He complained about the distortion of his record and of attempts to write him out of Tory party history. He regarded the Thatcher era as an ‘aberration’ from the true Conservative tradition represented by him and his predecessors, and saw John Major in the 1990s as a return to that tradition though, as John Campbell noted, on all the big issues of the 1992 election (taxation, investment in public services, devolution, Europe) his views were closer to Labour’s than to the government’s. He did not disguise his contempt for the ‘neurotic paranoia’ and the ‘kamikaze politics’ of the Eurosceptics, whom he thought Major wrong to seek to appease and




gave too much away to. He turned against Major after Britain left the ERM. By 1997, says Dennis Kavanagh, Heath was almost a crossbencher, supporting Labour’s policies on the minimum wage and on devolution.8 Even an admirer like Douglas Hurd thought Heath’s ‘personal feeling against the woman who had ousted him from political leadership was dominant’. He seemed to harbour a deep and undying resentment, to be ‘consumed by pique and petulance’, as Campbell puts it, to be graceless, unforgiving and jealous – unwilling to give any credit for or even to recognise her successes. Her supporters liked to rub it in that, unlike him, she beat the NUM, did not ‘U-turn’, and won general elections. He phoned his office when she fell from power and said: ‘Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice’. The gloves came off after she left Number 10: in extraordinary public attacks in 1991 he denounced her ‘lies’ and ‘falsehoods’ about Europe, talked about her ‘ghastly legacy’, and hit out at her ‘little mind’.9 In November 1978 Heath had publicly stated he would never challenge Mrs Thatcher for the leadership. He remained – as he had always been – rather unapproachable and prickly. He had always been a political loner. He did not attempt to build up or lead a Heathite faction in the party or to organise, plot or cabal against Mrs Thatcher, which made it easier to dismiss him and his views. His former supporters and associates – the ‘Heathmen’ – made their accommodations with Thatcher and Thatcherism. Some tried to mend bridges and reconcile him to the new leader, but to their dismay and frustration he brushed these attempts aside. Whitelaw would have preferred him to ‘get out of politics altogether’ and thought the stance he took was bad for him and for the party. When Carrington told Heath he ought to have gone round ‘being a good loser, kissing Margaret on every possible opportunity and saying what a splendid woman she was’, Heath exploded: ‘Why on earth? I do not think she is any good. I am much better and ought still to be there.’ Heath still held a strong position in the Conservative Party and the Shadow Cabinet and with the public in 1975 – opinion polls usually showed him well ahead of Thatcher as a preferred prime minister. Had he had played what Campbell calls the part of the ‘loyal but worried elder statesman’, he would have made it more difficult for her to marginalise and exclude him, and he would have been better able to help check or moderate her policies, or even to help dispose of her when she was at her most unpopular (in 1980–81). He was almost his own worst enemy.10 Mrs Thatcher felt the need to say during the 1975 leadership contest that she would like Heath in her team ‘if he wanted it – and I should like him to want it’. She privately hoped he would not take up the offer. But he made clear he did not want to serve in her Shadow Cabinet and was annoyed at leaks she had offered him a place and that he had refused it. In 1979 he seemed to advertise his availability for the post of Foreign Secretary and was reported as disappointed when he was left in the cold and Lord



180 After Number 10

Carrington got the job. It was never possible to imagine Heath serving in a Thatcher Cabinet. That would have meant accepting the verdict of 1975, showing support for her leadership and working closely with her. If the result had been close in 1979, she might have been constrained to bring him back, but her comfortable majority meant she could firmly shut the door. As a deliberate insult, two weeks after the general election, that further poisoned their relationship, it was made known that Heath had been offered but had refused the post of ambassador to the USA. A less suitable post for the country’s leading pro-European could hardly be imagined. He later said he was ‘not cut out to be a postman’. Thatcher intended a sentence of political transportation or exile to remove him from the way.11 Unwanted and frustrated at home, Heath travelled extensively and enjoyed clocking up the air miles in the role of globetrotting international elder statesman. Douglas Hurd thought ‘his taste in foreign leaders became somewhat bizarre’ while John Campbell argued his internationalist idealism co-existed with a growing sense of weary realpolitik. As a young man in the 1930s he had accused Chamberlain of ‘turning all four cheeks at once’ to the dictators and ridiculed his foreign policy as ‘if at first you don’t concede, fly, fly, fly again’. But as a former prime minister, he laid himself open to similar criticism. He could be, as one obituary put it, ‘insensitive to democratic demands and insufficiently wary of authoritarian regimes’. He would have preferred a negotiated settlement to the Falklands crisis and a ‘way out’ for General Galtieri’s Argentine junta. He made regular trips to China, where the communist authorities carefully cultivated him; he condemned the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 but still came across as something of an apologist for the Beijing dictators. He went to Cuba and got on well with Fidel Castro. He opposed the 1990–91 Gulf War and his suggestion that Saddam Hussein be offered concessions as part of a negotiated settlement produced newspaper headlines denouncing him as an appeaser. He embarrassed the government – ministers criticised him for meddling and sending the wrong signals to Saddam – by flying off to Baghdad on a mercy mission to negotiate the release of 33 British citizens trapped in Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait and regarded as ‘hostages’. Heath told Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait but Tories of all stripes were angered by his intervention in the crisis. Later he supported the nonintervention policy of the Major government towards the Balkans conflict, scornfully dismissing what he called the ‘something must be done’ response to the ethnic cleansing and mass murders there.12 Heath never married and for all his busyness, friendships and worldwide contacts was fundamentally a self-sufficient and solitary person. But consolation – and more – for his political frustrations came from his many non-political interests and enthusiasms. A serious international yachtsman, he captained Britain’s Admiral’s Cup ocean-racing team in 1979 and continued sailing until 1986, when he was 70. He took on many conducting




engagements in Britain and internationally, including the Berlin Philharmonic and performing with the London Symphony Orchestra and several leading US orchestras. One music critic described him as ‘impervious to criticism’ but noted that ‘while some decried his efforts as those of an amateur, his presence on the podium regularly created a sense of occasion – and orchestras responded accordingly’. It has rightly been said that ‘music freed emotions that he normally kept hidden’.13 In 1988 he recorded works by Beethoven and Boccherini, and his 1971 live recording of Elgar’s ‘Cockaigne’ Overture was released as a CD to mark his 80th birthday. He is the only former prime minister who could choose some of his own musical recordings when he appeared on Desert Island Discs. In 1985 he bought a beautiful 18th century house, Arundells, in the cathedral close at Salisbury, becoming an active supporter and fund-raiser for the restoration of the cathedral. He would have liked to follow Macmillan in becoming Chancellor of Oxford University in 1987 but the Conservative vote split – to the benefit of Roy Jenkins – and Heath came third in the poll. He had considerable success in the 1970s with best-selling illustrated books about sailing, music and travel, which brought in around £300,000 in a three-year period. He toured tirelessly to promote the books and hold signings – he would joke that the unsigned copies of Sailing or Music were the valuable ones. In 1985 he signed a lucrative deal with publishers for his memoirs but dragged his feet over them and The Course of My Life did not appear until 1998, 24 years after he left Number 10. Hodder and Stoughton paid him £360,000 for the book, and the Sunday Times paid £220,000 for serialisation rights. He is also said to have half-written but failed to deliver a seminal book about Europe. The memoirs project almost floundered more than once, and a large and fluctuating team of researchers and writers helped him over the years – Heath himself being no wordsmith. His memoirs received some decent reviews and included some good stories and vignettes but were considered overall rather dull, defensive and personally unrevealing.14 Heath left £5.4 million in his will, most of it to a charitable foundation to conserve and allow the public to visit his house in Salisbury. An element of mystery, as John Campbell says, always surrounded his finances. A group of businessmen helped with the cost of the large private office and personal staff he continued to maintain after he left Number 10. Heath was good at getting others to pay for his travelling expenses and overseas trips. He earned large fees on the international lecture circuit. Although he never sat on a British company’s board, he was for 20 years a member of the public review board of the international accountancy firm, Arthur Andersen. In the late-1980s he made a series of television advertisements for English cheese. Denis MacShane has written of his ‘occult financial relationships with China’. Heath is believed to have made substantial sums from business interests there, as an adviser to a state-owned Chinese shipping firm and as an adviser on China to investment funds run by Dresdner Kleinwort



182 After Number 10

Benson, to the international conglomerate Jardine Fleming, and to a Saudirun think-tank.15 Heath remained the political curmudgeon to the end. After New Labour came to power in 1997, he thought Tony Blair was a ‘Thatcherite’ and ‘obviously far more to the right than I am’. In 1998 he joined Labour dissidents in condemning the ‘dubious’ bombings of Iraq and criticised Blair’s unequivocal support of Clinton and the US. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks he told Tony Benn that Blair should ‘pipe down. He’s pretending he’s the leader of the whole world.’ In the build up to the Iraq war, he phoned Benn in 2003 to ask him ‘how can we get rid of Blair?’ When Benn noted that, apart from Spencer Perceval, we have never had any primeministerial assassinations, whereas ‘American presidents seem to be assassinated quite frequently [sic]’, Heath replied: ‘not frequently enough as far as the present one [George W. Bush] is concerned!’ He had wanted the pro-European Ken Clarke to become Conservative leader and was deeply disenchanted with the Tory party of William Hague and its visceral antiEuropeanism. It was claimed Heath once described Hague as ‘a vulgar little man’, and he said it was a ‘tragedy for the party’ he became its leader. Hague never consulted him. Under Hague, he complained, the party was even more right-wing than under Thatcher, and Heath’s comment in 1998 that if he was a young man today he would not join the Conservative Party was widely publicised.16 Living until he was 89 years old, Heath died at Arundells on 17 July 2005. His ashes were buried at Salisbury Cathedral. He had had the longest post-premiership of any 20th century prime minister (31 years and four months – Alec Home, the next longest, living for one week short of 31 years after he left Number 10) and the fourth longest in British history. But for all the interest and variety of his political and non-political activities after 1974, there remains a strong sense, as Dennis Kavanagh says, that Heath’s ‘immense talents and energies had been wasted after his abrupt removal from public office’. He had, as John Campbell argues, flaunted his independence but had, through his own actions and views and because of the actions and views of his successors, ended up in ‘the political doghouse, condemned to a sort of internal exile’. It was, in Campbell’s words, ‘a sadly wasteful evening to what had been a career of extraordinary dynamism and purpose’. For a former prime minister to ‘cast himself in open and outright opposition to the leadership of his own party’ over such a long period was indeed ‘a phenomenon unprecedented since the eighteenth century, and bitterly resented by party loyalists’. There are some parallels with Rosebery, but he publicly broke with his own party, while Heath continued to sit in parliament under the colours of his. Heath would probably have attracted much less flak and odium had he quickly withdrawn from active politics like Baldwin, Churchill, Eden and Macmillan. To stay on the scene and not to play a loyalist role, serving under successors – like Balfour and




184 After Number 10

Home – invited trouble. Heath was neither a successful prime minister nor a successful former prime minister.17

The drivers of the Government Car Service – once described by Tony Benn as ‘the source of all information’ – immediately twigged that Harold Wilson must be planning to resign when in April 1975 he ordered that in future all former prime ministers were to have a car and driver for life. ‘The crafty bugger must be preparing to get out’, was the message that went round the drivers’ network in a flash, ‘and then he’ll have a car for life’. Until 1970 even the Leader of the Opposition did not have an official car, but Heath had agreed one for Wilson when they swopped jobs that year. In 1975 Wilson returned the favour when Heath was ousted as Tory leader but also made sure that, when his time came, he would be provided for (he did not own a car of his own). In June 1976 it was reported that of the five former prime ministers then eligible to use official cars, only Wilson and Heath were doing so.18 Wilson liked to boast he was the first prime minister for nearly 40 years (since Baldwin) ‘to go voluntarily – not defeated, humiliated in Parliament, rejected by the electorate, or ill’, though in both cases there are qualifications over the last point. Secure in the post he was in 1976, as his policy adviser Bernard Donoughue points out, ‘unchallenged as leader of his Government and his party’. His announcement on 16 March 1976 that he would resign the premiership, and stay just long enough for the Labour Party to elect a new leader, was greeted with ‘shocked disbelief’. Even a close Wilson ally, Barbara Castle wondered exactly what Wilson was up to and thought there must be ‘more than had met the eye’. A media frenzy built up with speculation about possible scandals, plots and conspiracies, involving his controversial aide Marcia Williams, Lady Falkender, murky business deals, Wilson’s links with Russia, or perhaps a big economic crisis that was about to erupt. Even though rumours and suspicions persisted for many years, the conspiracy theorists were wide of the mark. There was no ‘hidden motive or threat’ – Wilson genuinely wanted to retire, had been planning his resignation for some time, and was not forced out.19 Retiring early had been Wilson’s intention for some time. Had he won reelection in 1970 at the end of his first period in Number 10 (1964–70) he would not have stayed as prime minister for a full term but gone after about three years in the summer of 1973, having by then passed the 20th century record for continuous service as PM, then held by Asquith. He was fairly open about this scheme, talking about it to Joe Haines, his press secretary, and to Roy Jenkins and Tony Benn among Labour politicians.20 But having lost to Heath he wanted to return to power first and endured a miserable period of Opposition (1970–74), though a further general election defeat might have led him to call it quits.



Harold Wilson (left office 5 April 1976)

From the time he became prime minister again, on 4 March 1974, he had a settled intention to remain no more than two years. The Queen, his Downing Street ‘Kitchen Cabinet’ advisers, and a number of senior ministers were all told what to expect or dropped hints or read the runes. Despite a couple of last minute hiccups he stuck to his timetable and went just after his 60th birthday. Wilson had been at the top for nearly 30 years (he first became a Cabinet minister in 1947) and felt he owed it to his wife Mary – who intensely disliked political life – to get out before too long. However, she asked him if he wanted to stay another year to enjoy the Queen’s Jubilee in 1977, but he was clear he wanted to go. Once he had achieved his aim of winning the 1975 Common Market referendum and keeping Britain in Europe, he became bored and fed up with life as prime minister. He felt he was facing the same old problems and reaching for the same old solutions, lost his zest and appetite for office, began to dread Prime Minister’s Questions and to need too many brandies beforehand, and after, and found the job wearisome. Marcia Williams tried to persuade him to stay but other close aides came to feel that physically, intellectually and psychologically he was no longer up to the demands of the job. He was winding down over his last year in Number 10, a shadow of what he had previously been, a burnt-out case. He seemed often exhausted, and his health was not good, with several attacks of what his doctor called ‘racing heart’. A civil-service private secretary said he had had ‘heart attacks’ in 1975–76. His prodigious memory and razor-sharp intellect were not what they were. The outside world did not know that his mother, who had died in 1958, had had Alzheimer’s disease and it is possible Wilson may have feared he could detect early signs of it in himself. If so, Wilson deserves credit for realising he could and should not carry on.21 In his retirement announcement issued to the press Wilson stated he would remain in parliament and support his successor – but would refrain from offering ‘gratuitous advice’ – giving any help he could ‘apart from accepting a ministerial appointment’. However, in his official biography, Philip Ziegler – citing interviews with Marcia Falkender and James Callaghan – says that when Callaghan became prime minister (Wilson’s preferred successor) he offered Wilson the post of Foreign Secretary, though he apparently did not expect him to accept it. Wilson had had enough and did not want to stay in office in any capacity, even in a non-departmental post such as Lord President. There are claims that in November 1976 Callaghan offered the Treasury to Wilson. Concerned that Healey was exhausted, the prime minister was considering replacing the Chancellor at that time, and also approached Roy Jenkins. How serious any offer was is uncertain. But it is doubtful Wilson would have been equal to the demands of the job in the middle of an economic crisis that IMF autumn. ‘Harold was a strange thought’, mused Bernard Donoughue, then head of Callaghan’s Policy Unit, when he heard the story months later.22




Wilson took considerable pleasure in becoming a Knight of the Garter, the award being announced on 23 April 1976. In that most un-comradely of parties, the Labour Party, there were left-wing sniggers and gripes. Tony Benn thought it was ‘ridiculous’. ‘It is unnecessary’, claimed Bob Cryer MP, ‘because the respect in which he is held by the Labour movement is sufficient reward’. More serious and lasting damage to Wilson’s reputation came from the publication the following month of his resignation honours list. Three-quarters of the names passed without comment but immense controversy surrounded the peerages and knighthoods to various business, financial and show-business figures who were neither noted Labour supporters nor close to the former prime minister personally, as opposed to Marcia Falkender. Stories circulated about the so-called ‘lavender list’, written on her notepaper. The Palace and the Honours Scrutiny Committee had queried and even vetoed some names and proposed awards. One was later jailed and another committed suicide following fraud allegations. A storm of media abuse and criticism broke over Wilson. He had always regarded the honours system rather cynically as a useful tool of primeministerial power. But while Wilson was not personally corrupt, the resignation honours scandal was toxic, unsavoury and disreputable, and left a cloud over his retirement.23 Further trouble and damage to his image came in the controversy over the so-called ‘Wilson plot’. While still prime minister, Wilson had become convinced that right-wing rogue elements in the secret service – in cahoots with the CIA, the South African secret service and other shadowy figures – had been plotting against him, engaging in ‘dirty tricks’ operations, and seeking to destabilise or even overthrow his government. When Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe resigned following a scandal in May 1976, Wilson went to his defence, suggesting he was a victim of South African ‘smears’. Then, when Wilson talked to two journalists (Barry Penrose and Roger Courtiour) about his suspicions – ‘dark forces … were attacking our democracy’ – in the hope of putting pressure on the government to investigate and to appoint a Royal Commission to examine the accountability of the security services, the whole issue blew up in his face. Newspaper stories about his claims and the journalists’ book The Pencourt File (1978) made him appear deluded and paranoid. Prime Minister Callaghan told Benn that Wilson was ‘just a Walter Mitty’; other insiders regarded his allegations as bizarre or ‘mad’. An already tarnished ex-prime minister’s stock plummeted. Wilson soon regretted talking to the journalists, feeling they had been used to discredit him, and took a Trappist vow on the subject. Only much later – following the Spycatcher and Colin Wallace revelations – did it emerge that Wilson had been on to something and there were legitimate concerns about how far the security services had been fully under control in his time. He was to some extent vindicated. ‘Wilson’s allegations of illegitimate activities against him clearly had some foundation’, as Pimlott



186 After Number 10


A plump little man in a slightly crumpled suit, apparently casting aside, without a backward look, the famous house, the supreme office which is the ultimate objective of any British politician’s dreams. The sharp contrast with Margaret Thatcher’s tearful departure fourteen years later is striking. As with much else, Wilson seemed not really to care … ‘Nothing sticks with him.’ Except for Mary and Marcia, personal relations did not usually survive beyond their current utility … He seemed to have no regrets and no proud memories … I felt personal concern for Harold Wilson as I saw him leave Number 10. I could not imagine what he would do with his time, deprived of the flow of crises and meetings and papers and colleagues to manage, on all of which he thrived. He had too few genuine personal interests to keep him busy and satisfied. Chairing his coming Royal Commission [sic] on the City of London and writing his colourless story of his administration would not be enough … He had few real and permanent friends … He seemed to me to be disappearing through that black door into a black hole … In the diary he kept at the time, Donoughue wrote: ‘I don’t know how he will cope in the real world of non-politics outside … He cannot go back to being an active backbencher … He will be lost.’25 Wilson ‘didn’t realize that retirement would be as traumatic as it was’, a former close aide told Pimlott, ‘or that so much of his total existence had been involved in the job.’ His biographer added ‘the discovery of his waning news value came as a shock, on top of the wider disorientation of his lost importance’. He quickly became what Benn called ‘a lonely isolated figure’ at Westminster and in the Labour Party; the former premier had ‘absolutely shrunk’ and ‘disappeared from sight’, Benn was writing just months after his retirement. For a few months Callaghan would occasionally ring him up to consult him about one issue or another, but, as Ziegler says, ‘Wilson never deluded himself that his reply was listened to with great deference and little by little the habit died’. Being strongly pro-Israel, he had told his successor he would back the government on every issue but would watch its Middle East policy carefully. He went to Number 10 in September 1976 with some complaints – Callaghan gave him just five minutes and was reportedly irritated by his lobbying. Far from regarding him as a respected elder statesman, Labour MPs ignored him, treated him as an



says. But that certain intelligence operatives could convince themselves that someone with such conservative/monarchist views, allied to a shallow and gimmicky radicalism, could really be a ‘red under the bed’, a KGB spy or at the centre of a network of Russian agents, suggests they had not been keeping Wilson under close enough surveillance.24 Bernard Donoughue has written vividly about Wilson’s departure from office:

embarrassment, or actively disparaged him – ‘everybody uses the word “shabby”’, Donoughue recorded in March 1977.26 The idea he might come back into power one day – that there would be a clamour in the party for him to return to take charge in a crisis – was given some credence, particularly by left-wing ministers. Wilson himself, in a press interview in March 1976, did not rule it out, saying only it would have to be ‘a very great crisis indeed … a war situation or a situation I cannot envisage’. He said privately to a Number 10 aide he expected to receive the ‘doctor’s mandate to get the country out of the mess’ after he had retired. It was fantasy politics. In 1978, he told Roy Jenkins he thought the political outlook was bad, there was not much future for Callaghan’s government or for the Labour Party, and that a coalition would be necessary – but then said ‘he would bless it from the outside, but not serve’.27 Wilson took on a number of ‘Great and the Good’ assignments immediately after leaving Number 10. In July 1976 he became chairman of an inquiry into the financing of the British film industry, a subject in which he had been interested since the 1940s. A little later he became chairman of a committee of inquiry into the workings of financial institutions in the UK. This inquiry was a way for the government to kick into the long grass left-wing demands for nationalisation of the banks and City institutions. The committee launched a series of detailed studies into aspects of the financial system, took three years over its work and came up with only limited and cautious recommendations, finally reporting and disappearing largely without trace in 1980, by which time a Conservative government had been elected. Wilson enjoyed the work and found it fascinating, but he had not wanted a radical report and was criticised from within the committee as ‘an awful chairman … very rambling, and often referring matters to subcommittees which don’t exist’. He allegedly once turned up to a meeting with a brief case containing nothing but his cigars.28 Apart from the City inquiry he spent much time in his first few years of retirement on various writing projects. Two days after leaving Number 10 he started work on a book about the workings of the Cabinet, Number 10 and Whitehall – the first such book to be written by a former prime minister – finishing it ten weeks later and seeing it published in October 1976. The Governance of Britain suffers from the haste with which it was put together, and shows Wilson to be a constitutional conservative, but is more interesting than detractors often suggest. The following year (1977) he published A Prime Minister on Prime Ministers with a tie-in television series, profiling 12 premiers. Wilson had been discussing this project, from which he made an estimated £100,000, with David Frost, publishers and TV executives several months before he had retired – which some close aides felt was dubious practice when his planned departure was still a secret; Frost’s name was struck off the resignation honours list because of his direct financial involvement with Wilson through this deal. It is a bland coffee-table book. Kenneth



188 After Number 10

Morgan pointed out ‘some of his warmest praise goes to Tories, including Pitt, Disraeli, and especially Churchill, with some incidental nostalgia for the foreign policy of Palmerston’. In 1979 Final Term appeared, his selfjustificatory account of the 1974–76 government – a book the author himself admitted was ‘boring’. He had received a quarter of a million pounds in 1970 for his book about the 1964–70 government and hoped for a six-figure sum for this one too, but instead received only around £30,000. In 1981 he published The Chariot of Israel, a survey of British and American policy towards Israel in which his sympathies towards the latter state and people are obvious. His final book, The Making of a Prime Minister 1916–1964, published in 1986 when Wilson was on the downward path of illness and decline, was anecdotal and ghost written.29 Wilson made some money from speaking and lecturing in Britain and the USA after he retired but this activity was curtailed as his health problems deepened. He made some unsuccessful forays into popular entertainment. He appeared on the 1978 Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special TV show – ‘like some political Archie Rice in The Entertainer’, noted Bernard Donoughue, ‘doing a song and dance for a few miserable pounds’. In 1979 he discovered that hosting a TV chat-show is more difficult than it looks, bombing as the host in a programme called ‘Friday Night, Saturday Morning’ as he woodenly talked to guests Harry Secombe, Pat Phoenix, Freddie Trueman and Tony Benn. He had said when he resigned he would not ‘go into industry or take paid employment’. But it was revealed in 1990 he was a paid non-executive director of an import-export company specialising in East European trade, for which he had visited Romania in 1985, perhaps being used to peddle some influence, open doors and promote trade with the Ceausescu regime. Wilson had simple tastes and no interest in amassing personal wealth. After his retirement he lived in a flat in Victoria, and the Wilsons had a small holiday bungalow on the Scilly Isles. At death he left £420,000.30 Wilson lingered on in a sort of political limbo after 1976, having only a minimal political role. He spoke only occasionally in the Commons, making only eight speeches, the last in 1981, before he stood down in 1983. Some of his political interventions were the opposite of helpful, as when in 1979 he gave press interviews criticising Callaghan’s handling of the ‘Winter of Discontent’ crisis and suggested he would have done better. During the 1979 election campaign, in which he took little part, he criticised Labour ministers and praised Mrs Thatcher, saying that Mary Wilson might vote for her. He did not like the way the Labour Party was going. He was contemptuous of the Bennite left and the ‘bed-sitter infiltrators’, concerned about the adoption of a unilateral nuclear disarmament policy, but, despite Shirley Williams once being a favourite of his as a possible successor, not supporting those who broke away to form the SDP. He played no part in the 1980 leadership contest following Callaghan’s resignation, but




is known to have voted, eccentrically, for Denis Healey in the first ballot and the left-wing Michael Foot in the second. In 1983 after having given another interview unhelpful to Labour’s cause to the Daily Mail just before the general election, he moved to the Lords with a life peerage. He spoke only a few times there, making speeches on higher education in March 1984 (he was Chancellor of Bradford University until 1985) and on unemployment in May 1984, his last (brief) intervention coming in June 1986. To Neil Kinnock, Labour leader after 1983, Wilson was almost an un-person, someone to be scapegoated for past failures and broken promises when he was not being ignored.31 Wilson lasted 19 years after stepping down but was robbed of what could have been a more fruitful period in his life when he succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease. He had several major operations for colon cancer in 1980 and was never the same again. His memory had been going before then but the decline accelerated afterwards. As the curtain of oblivion descended on him, he could still be seen around the Lords, gently shepherded by his wife, who nursed him devotedly, and a few old friends, but formal public appearances became infrequent. Of his old political colleagues only Roy Jenkins (who had defected to the SDP) still kept in touch with him. In the 1990s Mary Wilson decided it was time to retire from public life altogether and the Scilly Isles became their sanctuary.32 An almost forgotten figure Wilson died, aged 79, on 23 May 1995 at St Thomas’s Hospital in London, and was buried on the Scilly Isles.

James Callaghan (left office 4 May 1979) In old age James Callaghan (Labour prime minister 1976–79) said he would not be surprised to be considered as the worst prime minister for more than 200 years. He felt he must carry the can for the ‘winter of discontent’ – the widespread trades-union strikes that paralysed and helped destroy his government – and that he should have taken ‘more initiatives’ when he was in Number 10. He was too harsh on himself. Historians and political scientists have actually ranked him in a far-from-disastrous ‘mid-table’ position when evaluating the performance of 20th century PMs. Given his economic and political inheritance, he was a better prime minister than he was given credit for in the immediate aftermath of his 1979 defeat. He was prime minister for three years and 29 days, only four other 20th century premiers having a shorter tenure of office. But for his skills as a tough political fixer, his government could have crashed into the rocks long before 1979. After losing a vote of confidence in the Commons, the first government to do so for more than 50 years, he and his party went down to an emphatic defeat in the ensuing general election, one which Callaghan never expected to win. It was even, in some sense, a relief. As he later recalled: ‘As a matter of fact, I didn’t mind leaving. Because I’d got to the stage when I thought,



190 After Number 10

“well (a) we can’t win, (b) I don’t know what to do next anyway.” … I didn’t want to stay on.’33 Callaghan was 67 when he left Number 10. He was four years older than Harold Wilson and he had expected to retire after two or three years as Foreign Secretary until Wilson’s surprise resignation unexpectedly opened the door to Number 10 for him. In the 1970s, as he moved into his sixties, he was more mellow and relaxed, finding the satisfactions of family life increasingly attractive, enjoying his farm, and comfortably off.34 While he was willing to take his chance when it came in 1976 and, until the final few months, enjoyed being prime minister, he seems psychologically to have been more able to accept, and more reconciled to, the loss of office and power than some other prime ministers. Had he followed his personal inclination in May 1979 Callaghan would have resigned immediately as Labour leader, leaving the party to find a new leader. Having been in active politics for over three decades, it would have been a natural time to bow out. Given the Conservative majority of 43 and a likely normal term for the new parliament, he would be in his early seventies at the time of the next general election. But he was persuaded to stay on and unanimously re-elected. His 17 months as Leader of the Opposition were, he would admit, one of the unhappiest periods in his life. Within a week of the general election he told Denis Healey he planned to stay on just long enough to ‘take the shine off the ball’ for him,35 by which he meant getting the party over the immediate pain and bitterness of defeat, and standing up to the Left, in the hope of smoothing the way for his preferred successor. The precedents were not encouraging. After 1951 Attlee had hung on at a roughly similar age, trying to influence the succession, by blocking Morrison, but the party descended into civil war and languished in Opposition for 13 years. The decision to remain leader of the Labour Party was a mistake he later regretted. Callaghan was unable to stop Labour tearing itself apart, with left-right ideological feuding and battles over changes to the party’s constitution designed to shackle the party leadership and MPs. He despaired at Militant Tendency’s infiltration of local parties, and had to take on Trotskyist critics in his own Cardiff constituency. Both sides turned on him. He faced personal insults from the Left, who treated him contemptuously as a ‘guilty man’ and traitor to ‘socialism’, and disowned his government’s record. The social-democratic right thought he was too weak with the party, criticising him as ‘the Labour Party’s Neville Chamberlain’ – hoping for ‘unity in our time’ – and accusing him of selling out and of fatal and ineffective appeasement of the superior forces of the Left and the trades unions. He was against giving power to constituency activists to re-(or de-)select MPs and unhappy about the idea of an electoral college for leadership elections. Callaghan knew the Left and its activist cadres intended to use




these mechanisms to take over the party. But, as a Labour traditionalist and machine politician he did not, or could not, see that a bold move to empower the wider, more moderate, mass membership in local parties and the unions on a one-member-one-vote basis could have outflanked the Left. ‘Remaking’ the Labour Party was beyond his scope and something he was not fitted for. He seemed increasingly out-of-date, just hanging on without a positive strategy or a strong sense of destination, vision or purpose.36 Callaghan’s rearguard action during 1979–80 was unsuccessful. The Labour Party seemed determined to spiral into extremism and irrelevance. Under Michael Foot in 1983 the 1979 defeat was turned into disaster. In June 1980 Shirley Williams told the journalist Hugo Young that Callaghan ‘must stand down – he is doing his reputation absolutely no good by staying on and obliterating the memory of what was, after all, a not-half-bad primeministership’.37 Some of those who criticised him for not fighting hard enough against the Left – like her – jumped ship to found the SDP rather than themselves staying to slug it out with their party enemies. Callaghan would never defect, but had had enough of the infighting. With the details for an electoral college to pick Labour leaders to be fixed at a special conference in January 1981, Callaghan opposed change but in the end gave up the struggle. He decided to resign while the choice of a new leader would still rest with MPs alone. Many on the Left, who had been up to then condemning him, begged him to stay – fearing the election of Healey. Callaghan was adamant, and announced his departure on 15 October 1980. The succession ‘went wrong’ when the left-wing Michael Foot beat Healey for the leadership. It was a bitter end to his leadership of the party. After giving up the Labour leadership Callaghan became a model ex-prime minister. ‘He behaved wonderfully well in retirement’, Peter Hennessy has said. ‘He was an example of how ex-Prime Ministers should behave.’ He was dignified and an authoritative voice, an active and respected elder statesman, combining loyalty to his successors with a non-partisan stance when appropriate, constructively participating in public debate, as Kenneth Morgan noted, calling him ‘a considerable ex-Prime Minister’. He managed to give the impression of being at ease and of enjoying his post-premiership. His farm in Sussex, where he spent more of his time, brought him great pleasure and satisfaction. ‘I think I’ve never been so contented in my life’, he told an interviewer in 1985. He was not seeking office but hoped he still had a role to play, contributing from his experience: ‘I would like to know that people still respect my opinion and care for it.’ ‘The advantage of being a former Prime Minister’, he said in a House of Lord debate in 1989, ‘is that one is treated with the same respect as one had when one was Prime Minister but that one does not have the red boxes. One has all the advantages without any of the disadvantages’. Anthony Howard said in retirement he ‘scarcely put a foot wrong’ and saw his reputation increase rather than diminish after he left Downing Street.38



192 After Number 10

Callaghan stayed in the House of Commons until 1987, becoming Father of the House in 1983, the only-surviving member of Attlee’s post-war Labour government remaining in the Commons. He pipped the Tory MP Sir Hugh Fraser, who had also become an MP in 1945, to the post of Father of the House because he had taken the Oath a couple of weeks before him in August 1945. The convention is that the Father of the House may speak when he wishes, so he was able to intervene frequently and play an active role. As Morgan puts it, ‘He took part in major setpiece debates as a highly respected and experienced senior figure treated with much deference.’ In 1985 political correspondents voted him the Spectator’s Back-Bencher of the Year. Speaking in 1982 on the Falklands War, he supported the use of force to recapture the islands but took the government to task for failing to defend them properly in the first place. In 1986 on the Westland controversy he landed heavier punches and was a more effective critic of Mrs Thatcher and the government than the-then Labour Party leaders. He had supported Hattersley for leader in 1983, though his attitude towards Kinnock became more positive as he started to reform party policy, and took on and defeated Militant. He tried to keep out of internal Labour-Party battles over policy in this period, but felt, says Morgan, the 1983 manifesto was ‘absurd and extremist’. He caused controversy with provocative interventions on defence in both 1983 and 1987, when he criticised the party’s unilateralism. During the 1983 election he argued that Polaris should not be given up ‘for nothing in return’, greatly embarrassing the party just before polling day, and leading the left to denounce him as a traitor who helped lose the election. Subsequently he was booed at the 1983 party conference when he spoke against unilaterally abandoning nuclear weapons. In March 1987, speaking in the Commons, he declared his support for Trident and again reopened party wounds over unilateral nuclear disarmament. Greeted with cheers from Tory MPs, Callaghan – throughout his career, the sturdy patriot – was voicing the opinions of moderate Labour MPs and a significant proportion of the Shadow Cabinet worried about the wisdom and electoral acceptability of the party’s defence policy. Eric Heffer on the left denounced his remarks as ‘unforgivable’, and there was a widely-reported Commons tea-room shouting match with John Prescott, who protested ‘you’ve done it again’ – Callaghan replying, ‘if you had listened to me the first time, you wouldn’t be in the mess you are now’.39 Apart from needing an operation to remove his gall bladder in 1985 and a minor heart attack in 1988, Callaghan was fit and well and enjoyed good basic health after Number 10. Well into his eighties he was able to maintain an active lifestyle, including a great deal of foreign travel, visiting 37 countries after 1979. Just as he had been a major international statesman and ‘summiteer’ as prime minister, he enjoyed playing the role of international elder statesman and did so with assurance. In lectures, sometimes




collecting big fees but many given without payment, and addresses at international conferences, he set out his views on economic and development issues, world poverty, international security, democracy and leadership. He was involved in the ‘Vail Group’, led by ex-US President Gerald Ford, with regular meetings of former heads of government of his era, including exChancellor of Germany Helmut Schmidt and ex-French President Giscard D’Estaing, to discuss international issues. Schmidt called it ‘a conspiracy of former world leaders against present world leaders. But thank God none of us has the power to do anything anymore.’40 In 1978 Callaghan had told a colleague he would not take a peerage when he retired but would prefer to commute from his farm to take seminars at Sussex University, thereby meeting intelligent young people and not the ‘old fogies’ in the Lords. Morgan says ‘he had long held the Lords in some contempt as an old man’s club and a political irrelevance’. But in 1987 he accepted a life peerage and became a conscientious and respected member of the Lords. An ardent monarchist he was delighted to become a Knight of the Garter in the same year. He had got on well with the Queen as prime minister and, according to Roy Hattersley, during his retirement developed the habit of writing to her, and apparently she invariably replied. In the Lords, he was an active, respected and influential peer, who spoke on a wide range of issues – and one whom other peers would come into the chamber to listen to. Offended when the Conservative Cabinet minister William Waldegrave suggested in 1994 he had lied when dealing with parliamentary questions about devaluation in 1967, Callaghan neatly skewered the hapless Tory minister two years later in a debate on the Scott Report. Waldegrave, a bit player in the arms-to-Iraq affair, had himself been caught out not telling the truth but Scott had said he was not insincere. ‘So if he was not a knave’, asked Callaghan, ‘what was he, a simpleton?’ Neither, piped up Lord Hailsham – he is a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford. Then that, shot back the old pro in a devastating put down, made him ‘a clever silly’. He enjoyed a personal success in 1988, when – prompted by his wife Audrey, a trustee and former chairman of Great Ormond Street Hospital – the government accepted an amendment he moved to the Copyright Bill to extend the term under which the hospital could continue to collect royalties from J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan despite the expiration of copyright.41 In 1987 he published his memoirs, Time and Chance, a solid book of over 500 pages (in comparison, Heath’s and Major’s single volumes of memoirs are nearly half as long again). They are serious, honest and painstaking, but there are no great political disclosures, little political gossip and little about party politics. The book ends abruptly with election defeat in 1979 and there is only a three-page postscript on Labour Party politics afterwards – almost as if the subject was too wearying and painful to revisit.42 Coming from an impoverished background, Callaghan had no inherited wealth. But he became well off and left £1.9 million at death. His 138-acre



194 After Number 10

farm was sold for a reported £1.5 million in 2005. He benefitted from rising property values, having originally bought the farm for £20–30,000, and had made prudent investments, setting up a personal limited company (‘Leaderwise’) to manage his investments after his retirement from the leadership. ‘I don’t think he had an enormous amount of pure cash’, his biographer Lord Morgan told the press, ‘he didn’t go in for the after-dinner circuit or get much money for his biography.’ Morgan says he did not turn to lucrative business directorships or consultancies but instead was involved with a range of charitable, educational and environmental good causes, including being president of a housing association in Cardiff, president of Swansea University for nine years, a joint president of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and serving on the Forte Trust. He had close longterm links with the controversial, pyramid-selling Welsh financier Julian Hodge, and had been a director of his Commercial Bank of Wales in the early 1970s. Prudently, he avoided any ‘lavender notepaper’-type storm by not offering Hodge a peerage in his resignation honours, though he felt he deserved one. Through his fundraising for the Cambridge Overseas Trust, helping Commonwealth students with scholarships and bursaries, he was introduced – by Jimmy Carter – to the Middle Eastern financier Agha Hussan Abedi, who gave large sums to the Overseas Trust, but whose bank, BCCI, collapsed in 1991 in a major international financial scandal, with billions of dollars missing amid accusations about money-laundering and fraud. Unfortunately Callaghan had been temporarily employed as a BCCI adviser and had received in 1987 some travel and other expenses, which he had not declared in parliament’s register of MPs’ interests. Morgan suggests the BCCI association was unwise, careless and embarrassing.43 John Smith had been close to Callaghan when a minister in his Cabinet and continued to see him when Leader of the Labour Party 1992–94, saying he found his advice helpful. But after 1994, when Tony Blair, became party leader, Callaghan was not enthusiastic about the direction the party took, unhappy about the weakening of the union link and the drift to the right. As New Labour distanced itself from the party’s past, its traditions and its working-class roots, Callaghan spoke for many in the party when he protested about the much-used ‘Old Labour’ label, describing himself in a 1996 interview as ‘Original Labour’. There was a sense that New Labour kept him at a distance to avoid unhelpful reminders of the ‘Winter of Discontent’. ‘Yes, I’ve been blotted out of the photographs’, Callaghan would say. He conveyed his concerns privately and gave some advice to Blair on managing a government, which would seem to have been ignored, judging from Blair’s informal and highly-personalised Number 10 methods. After Blair won office – and Callaghan liked to say he wished he had had a similar majority – the former prime minister called in for advice about an EU summit was Lady Thatcher, not Callaghan. In 1990, John Major – new to Number 10 – had called Callaghan in to discuss the handling of a




forthcoming European heads of government meeting. Amends were made later at a birthday party, held in Number 10, to celebrate Callaghan’s 90th birthday in 2002. Callaghan’s last speeches in the House of Lords came in 1999, on the subject of Lords reform, supporting the removal of hereditary peers and looking forward to a more representative second chamber on the basis of a cross-party consensus on a ‘stage two’ reform. ‘I am an old Commons man’, he admitted. ‘Although I have been here 12 years, I shall always be a Commons man.’ In a strange coincidence, one of the key ministers responsible was his daughter Margaret, who had been made a life peer in 1992 and, as Baroness Jay, was Leader of the House of Lords 1998–2001.44 Tony Benn recalled attending a function at Number 10 where Callaghan told Blair: ‘Don’t forget Tony, looking at all the finery and trappings of No 10, when all this is gone, what really matters is the family.’ Callaghan’s family mattered immensely to him. In the 1990s Audrey Callaghan, to whom he been married since 1938, developed Alzheimer’s disease and Callaghan increasingly devoted himself to her care, though she eventually had to be looked after in a care home where he visited her every day. He suffered a minor stroke in 2001. Lady Callaghan died on 15 March 2005 and only 11 days later Callaghan himself, weakened by illness and plainly hit hard by her death, died at his home in Sussex, on 26 March 2005, the day before his 93rd birthday (making him the longest-living British PM).45



196 After Number 10

9

Margaret Thatcher (resigned 28 November 1990) The Conservative Party’s leadership culture has been often been characterised as a system of autocracy tempered by assassination. This tag certainly applies to the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher in November 1990. Michael Heseltine’s leadership challenge, the withdrawal of support by nearly half the Tory MPs with 40 per cent voting against her and another 6 per cent abstaining or spoiling their ballots, and then a coup-de-grâce from most of the members of the Cabinet in the form of advice she could not win the second round of voting – prompting her decision to resign – added up to the political assassination of a Downing Street autocrat. The unpopularity of the poll tax, splits over European policy, her growing hubris and recklessness, damaging Cabinet resignations, the loss of by-elections and a fall in the opinion polls had eroded her support within her party and made her seem a massive electoral liability. She is the only prime minister in modern times, in peacetime and in good health to have been forcibly ejected from office by her own party. Thatcher was shocked, stunned and ‘emotionally broken’ when she was forced out. She had earlier spurned the chance to bow out gracefully. Her husband, Denis Thatcher, and several senior colleagues would have liked her to ‘get out at the top’ in 1989 when she had served ten years as prime minister and 15 years as Conservative Party leader. She had won three general elections, never been defeated and become the longest-serving premier of the 20th century. Her place in history and the record books was assured. At the end of 1988 Denis Thatcher thought he had persuaded her to plan her departure but she apparently changed her mind when Willie Whitelaw told her it would split the party; Denis recognised she did not really want to go. In April 1990, when Lord Carrington told her the party wanted her to leave office ‘with dignity’ and at a time of her own choosing, she took it to be a coded message from the party establishment – whom she had always despised – seeking her earlier exit than she would otherwise 197



Thatcher to Blair

choose. She wanted to fight a fourth general election and then leave about two years into the next parliament, which would keep her in Downing Street until 1993 or 1994, making her the longest-serving PM since the 1820s. There was still so much to do, she believed. Like many long-serving leaders, she did not feel she had a worthy successor whom she could trust to keep her legacy secure and to build on it. ‘Dignity’ did not come into it – as she said in her memoirs, she would rather ‘go down fighting’.1 Aged 65 when she left Number 10, and a workaholic with few real friends and no interests outside politics, still full of drive and energy, Thatcher hated the whole idea of retirement, feeling a sort of existential angst about the loss of office, power and activity. She could not imagine doing anything else and did not want to do anything else. Denis Thatcher celebrated his freedom by buying a new Rolls-Royce. Security advisers had made him give up the one with personalised number plates he had owned when they had moved into Number 10 as dangerously conspicuous. Friends described his wife’s abrupt and brutal removal from power as leaving her ‘absolutely shell-shocked’, ‘distracted and unhappy’, and struggling to come to terms with what had happened. In her memoirs she confessed to feeling ‘marooned’ and to having ‘dark thoughts’. With the superb Number 10 life-support system withdrawn, she was thrown by some of the mundane practicalities of ordinary life, such as how to make a phone call or find a plumber on a Sunday. Although her former close aide Charles Powell, who stayed on to work in Number 10 with John Major for a few months, gave her detailed weekly briefings, she felt cut off from the information flows of government, and for the first time in years reduced to reading the newspapers to keep informed. The Thatchers soon found it was impractical for them to live in the house they had bought a few years earlier on an up-market private estate in suburban Dulwich, overlooking a golf course (for Denis): there were security disadvantages and it was too far from the centre of London for someone who intended to remain active in public and political life. Henry Ford’s widow loaned them an apartment in Belgravia, part of a house once the home of Stanley Baldwin, until they moved into a house in Chester Square, in Belgravia.2 Never squeamish about using patronage and the honours system to reward supporters Mrs Thatcher had handed out 216 peerages while prime minister. After 1990 she accumulated the appropriate public honours herself. Her relations with the Queen and the Palace were reported as strained but that did not prevent Her Majesty from awarding her the Order of Merit in December 1990 – a distinction limited to a group of just 24 and the highest honour in her gift. At the same time Denis Thatcher was given the first baronetcy since 1964, meaning their son, Mark, would later inherit the title. She was granted the Freedom of the City of Westminster, an honour previously given only to Churchill. In 1991 President Bush awarded her the Medal of Freedom, the highest US honour a foreigner can receive. Thatcher



198 After Number 10

had revived the practice of awarding hereditary peerages (Macmillan’s had been one) and there was speculation she was considering taking one herself, perhaps becoming a countess, the female equivalent of an earldom. But in the end, when she left the Commons at the 1992 election, she settled for a life peerage, as a baroness – the idea she might become a life countess was apparently ruled out by Number 10. In 1995 she was appointed to the Order of the Garter. Returning to government, like Douglas-Home, was never likely. John Major, wondering what to do about Thatcher, soon realised ‘there was no credible job to offer her’. Like some of his predecessors, thoughts of the Washington ambassadorship crossed his mind. Rows over Europe ruled out the Treasury and the Foreign Office; making her Leader of the House of Commons would not have worked out. After 11 years in power she was not able to take a subordinate position in someone else’s Cabinet, being too sharp-edged and divisive, and carrying too much political and policy baggage. The idea of Frank Field, the Labour MP and a friend, that she could help sort out the problems of Africa as a special ambassador for the G7, which she told Field she would be willing to do, also did not find favour.3 In the immediate aftermath of her overthrow she set herself three tasks: to make some money, to write her memoirs, and to set up a foundation to preserve her legacy and carry forward her ideas. Denis Thatcher was a retired millionaire businessman but the prime-ministerial pension and associated expenses would not be enough to support a central London home and the staff and scale of operations she planned. While still PM she had once sighed, ‘Oh well, there is always the mashed potato circuit’, and signing on with the Washington Speakers Bureau she soon started to collect fees of $50,000 per lecture, second only to Ronald Reagan. She took on a huge overseas travelling schedule, going to the US five or six times a year for lecture tours, with a similar number of trips to Japan and the Far East. Hugely popular abroad, more so than in the UK, she basked in her superstar receptions. ‘We operate now on a global scale’, she announced. She was prepared to exploit her name and celebrity, but would not accept payment for political speeches or for speaking in Britain, Russia, China, Hong Kong or South Africa. With a substantial publishing contract – she got £3.5 million for her memoirs for which at one point Mark Thatcher had been involved in negotiations and had talked wildly of getting up to £20 million – a deal with Citibank, and reported fees of more than half a million pounds a year as a consultant to the giant US tobacco firm Philip Morris, Thatcher’s personal wealth was estimated at £9 million in 1992. Later she joined the advisory board of a New York hedge-fund business as a consultant. She would not sit on the legal board of any company, but she did engage in considerable unofficial ‘beating the drum’ and lobbying on her travels around the world on behalf of British firms doing business and bidding for contracts.4



Thatcher to Blair 199

Thatcher’s account of her time in Downing Street, published in 1993, was 900 pages long, with a second 600-page volume, appearing in 1995, telling her version of her ‘path to power’. As with Churchill she did not compose everything published in her name, superintending a team of researchers and ghostwriters, but the style and tone of voice are authentically hers. The Downing Street Years sold half a million copies. Publication of each volume was accompanied by a massive media circus that heightened their political impact. Thatcher’s memoirs were for her, it has been said, ‘a continuation of politics by other means’. They were partial, self-serving, triumphalist and credit claiming; any mistakes and errors admitted to were generally down to other people. One chapter was entitled, without any signs of irony, ‘Putting the World to Rights’. In a TV interview with David Frost when the first volume was published she admitted, ‘I’m sure I was wrong on a number of occasions, but I cannot think of anything immediately.’ A sort of ‘memoirs war’ was fought with her former colleagues, such as Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson, the air thick with accusations, blame and self-justification. Thatcher’s bitterness and anger towards those ministers – many still in office under John Major – who had let her down or betrayed her was palpable. It had been, she said, ‘treachery with a smile on its face’. ‘No previous Prime Minister has gone out of his way to denigrate his former colleagues’, claimed Lord (Ian) Gilmour. ‘Lady Thatcher does it with relish.’ (She had sacked him in 1981 and said in her memoirs he had shown her the same loyalty from the backbenches as he had in government.) The attacks directed at her own side were seen as disloyal and damaging – an act of political vengeance. A big chunk of The Path to Power, looking at events since her overthrow, rubbed in the message that Major’s government had wasted her legacy and pursued the wrong policies – hardly supportive of a weak and unpopular administration.5 The Thatcher Foundation was set up in 1991 to spread her political creed and promote her ideas about free markets and democracy around the world. It provided her with a London base where she could work and receive visitors in a room sometimes described as like a film director’s idea of the prime minister’s office in Number 10. The Charity Commission’s refusal to grant it charitable status because it was not politically neutral hampered fund-raising, since companies could not claim tax relief, but branches were opened in the US and in Warsaw. The Foundation struggled to make a broad political impact and developed into something more like an educational trust, funding East European students to study business practices in the UK and endowing a chair of enterprise studies at Cambridge. It spread the word, or rather about 14 million words, by funding the distribution to 1,600 libraries around the world of a CD-ROM of her complete public statements, more than 7,000 speeches, interviews, articles and transcripts from 1945 to 1990. In 2005 with funding all but dried up it closed down in the UK, and activities switched to the USA, where the right-wing Heritage Foundation set up a Margaret Thatcher Center with money raised from American admirers.



200 After Number 10

John Major would have liked nothing better than for Thatcher to go gently into that good night; instead, she burned, raved and raged. She was determined her political career and influence had not come to an end. An unwise remark about being ‘a very good backseat driver’ was widely reported, though she was referring to George Bush and the Gulf War rather than Major when she said it. In her memoirs, she claimed she did not want to undermine her successor, knew his position was fragile and wanted him to succeed. She had faced, she said, sufficient difficulties from Ted Heath not to wish to be like him. She reportedly ‘went ballistic’ when Kenneth Clarke said she surely did not want to ‘go down in history as the second Ted Heath’. Heath, she would argue, had been motivated by personal antipathy and grudges, but she was standing up for her principles and values and could not stay silent when the policy issues at stake were so important. John Campbell argues Thatcher behaved worse than Heath. She owed Major a clearer duty of loyalty than Heath had ever owed to her; and her criticism and attacks on Major were far more damaging to Major and his government than Heath’s had ever been to her, not least because she still had a big following in the party, the country and internationally, whereas Heath had been so isolated and seen as a failure. She did not stage a ‘Great Sulk’ but more actively plotted against and tried to undermine Major, whom she soon came to regret backing as her successor. She mocked his style of leadership and absence of political ideas. She gave support and sustenance to Tory Eurosceptic rebels, helping to intensify and prolong the fatally-damaging party civil war. Most ex-prime ministers seem to mellow with age, but as she got older, she became more ideologically radical and fundamentalist, playing a role destabilising her party.6 Thatcher may have had a significant political presence for more than a decade after she left Number 10, until failing health curtailed her activities, but she did not play the parliamentary elder-stateswoman. Her interventions in parliamentary debates after she left office, in the Lords and Commons, were infrequent. The Margaret Thatcher Foundation lists on its website 99 out of 181 speeches and statements in her post-premiership that it classes as ‘major’ or of ‘key’ importance, but just 11 were speeches recorded in Hansard. Her last speech in the Lords was made in July 1999, on the Pinochet case. She championed the cause of the retired Chilean dictator – who had secretly provided the UK with intelligence and other assistance during the Falklands War – visiting him when he was placed under house arrest while in the UK and fighting his extradition to Spain on human-rights abuse charges. She did not find it easy to adjust to not being prime minister. She would still phone up ministers with advice and instructions, which they found irritating. Like others before her she did not know how to deal with someone holding what she regarded as her job. She – and the right of the party – had supported Major for the leadership to stop Heseltine, but soon began to feel betrayed and turned against him. She showed a lack of understanding of




the constraints he faced. Many Conservatives began to mythologise the Thatcher era, and groups like Conservative Way Forward and the Bruges Group were formed to keep the flame burning – they called her ‘the lady across the water’ – with an influx of right-wing Eurosceptic MPs into the party after 1992 (‘Thatcher’s Children’) making life extremely difficult for Major. Although Major in the 1990s in many ways consolidated and extended Thatcherism, she scornfully derided his ‘wavering around all over the place’, said there was ‘no such thing as Majorism’, mocked the idea of ‘No Nation Conservatism’ just after he had made a speech about his commitment to the ‘One Nation’ tradition, and announced she detected a tendency to undermine and undo what she had achieved. She got under his skin and Major was apparently ‘obsessed’ with her, calling her ‘mad, loopy, emotional’, and spitting out ‘I want her isolated, I want her destroyed’. After he had left office, he described her behaviour as ‘intolerable’ and said, ‘I hope none of my successors are treated in that way’.7 On taxation, government spending, policy towards Serbia and the Balkans, Thatcher paraded her unhappiness with or opposition to government policy and decisions. She steadfastly supported it over Hong Kong, however, and helpfully used her influence with the Chinese government. But the main battlefield was European policy. In office she had been more pragmatic and flexible over Europe than she liked to admit and had been advised and constrained by colleagues, Whitehall and the Foreign Office. Out of office she could speak out more freely but became more dogmatic and dependent for advice on allies and ideological soul mates, who egged her on. She denounced Maastricht as ‘a treaty too far’, insisted she would never have signed it, though Whitehall insiders were convinced that she would have accepted it, with its opt-outs for Britain, had she still been in power, and called for a referendum on it. Major was tempted by that idea but her call was counterproductive, as ministers did not want to be seen to giving in to her. She supported and provided political cover for the Tory Maastricht rebels, stiffening the waverers, in what Major described as ‘a unique occurrence in our party’s history: a former prime minister openly encouraging backbenchers in her own party, many of whom revered her, to overturn the policy of her successor – a policy that had been a manifesto commitment in an election held less than six months before’. Supporters admitted ‘she wanted to defeat the government on Maastricht’. Major would have resigned had the key vote been lost (he narrowly won) and knew his predecessor had tried to destroy him. In 1993 she led the attack on the treaty in the House of Lords, voting against the government on a three-line whip. She became unrestrained in her opposition to a federal Europe and the idea of a single currency.8 In 1995, though she did not say so openly, Thatcher’s reported view that Major had to go received media prominence. When Major put his leadership on the line in that year and was challenged by John Redwood, she



202 After Number 10

stayed publicly neutral, saying both candidates were ‘sound Conservatives’ but hinted at her support for the right-winger. It was widely assumed her real favourite at that time was Michael Portillo. Although she campaigned for the party during the 1997 general election, her view was that Major’s government had been a ‘directionless failure’ and she owed it little, if any, loyalty. She was impressed with Blair, and her private remarks that the country had little to fear from him, a patriot who would ‘not let Britain down’, became known. She recognised he had taken on board and accepted much of what her government had done. Her sympathies lay with James Goldsmith’s anti-European Referendum Party, which won 800,000 votes, mainly at the Tories’ expense, and she gave covert encouragement to some of its candidates. John Campbell argues that by making Major’s relationship with his backbenchers ‘almost impossible’, and by exacerbating the divisions and disunity in the party, she had ‘contributed substantially’ to the landslide defeat of 1997. Three weeks after his general election victory Blair outraged many in his own party by inviting Lady Thatcher into Number 10 to talk about foreign affairs and to pick her brains about how to deal with other European leaders. Blair admired her strong leadership and valued her experience. They kept in touch and she returned several times to Number 10 to talk with him about NATO, Kosovo and the US. It is possible, but unlikely, that her reported comment later in 1999 that Blair was ‘getting awfully bossy’ was a rare Thatcher self-knowing joke.9 The 1997 general election showed Thatcher had transformed the landscape of British politics and the political agenda. ‘We are all Thatcherites now’, as Peter Mandelson, one of the architects of New Labour, put it. Thatcher’s presence continued to be felt directly and indirectly: adored by the Conservative Party grassroots faithful, still blamed in opinion polls for the state of the health service, and a useful bogey figure for supporters of Scottish devolution. Her interventions in Tory leadership elections in 1997 and 2001 helped ensure the defeat on both occasions of the pro-European Kenneth Clarke and in 2001 the failure of the socially-liberal Michael Portillo, and the election first of William Hague and then of the inexperienced Iain Duncan-Smith. Thatcher was not particularly impressed by either, and her endorsements were reluctant and mostly motivated by her desire to avoid what she called ‘the disaster’ of a Clarke leadership. Both Hague and Duncan-Smith tried to keep a distance from her but she was something of a millstone around the neck, as Campbell put it, reminding voters of everything they disliked about the Conservative Party, inhibiting the much-needed break from the past and fresh start. A Thatcherite backlash scuppered an attempt in 1999 to move on from the free-market fixation, and she banged on unhelpfully about Europe. Increasingly she came to seem an eccentric spent force, who just could not give up, whose outbursts betrayed a lack of judgement and who had become, as Garnett says, ‘a serious embarrassment to senior Conservatives’. She could still grab the




headlines but often in a damaging way, as with her turning up at a Tory conference before the 2001 general election and announcing ‘the mummy returns’. It was a propaganda gift to the Labour Party and produced despair in the Tory high command. Some newspapers suggested she was in favour of the replacement of Duncan-Smith by Michael Howard in 2003 – the year after illness had publicly silenced her – and she was said to be delighted when he was leader. Howard was the first of her successors as party leader who did not have to be looking constantly over his shoulder and worrying about her reaction and interventions.10 In 2002 she published a final book, Statecraft, about world politics and international problems. Throughout her post-premiership she had been determined to keep thinking about and addressing the global picture. Her hard-headed contempt for the woolly internationalism of the ‘new world order’ and the ‘human rights brigade’, and the importance of tough and active US global leadership in the post-9/11 world were central themes of the book. Her stark views on Europe – that mainland Europe was the source, in one way or another, of most of the problems of the world during her lifetime, and that Britain should fundamentally renegotiate its membership and, if necessary, pull out of the EU and join the North American Free Trade Area, forming an Atlantic Economic Community – were controversial and disowned even by Eurosceptics within the Conservative Party. Such views made an intelligent debate within the party about the reform and the future of the EU more difficult. ‘She’s gone too far’, opined one local party chairman, calling her views ‘extremist’.11 Thatcher never had a normal or close-knit family life before or after 1990. Relations with her daughter Carol seemed cool and distant. She adored her son Mark but he lived abroad – in the USA, then South Africa and finally Spain – and shady and complex business dealings landed him in controversy and court cases, compounded by facing charges over involvement in an attempted coup to overthrow the president of Equatorial Guinea. Lady Thatcher was reported as having paid out hundreds of thousands of pounds to clear his debts and pay the fine imposed on him (along with a suspended prison sentence) by the South African court in the attempted coup case. When his marriage broke up, his former wife and the Thatchers’ grandchildren moved back to the USA. Carol Thatcher’s (1996) biography of her father painted a picture of Margaret and Denis Thatcher still leading ‘remarkably separate lives’ after 1990, ‘passing each other on their way to various engagements’.12 But there is no doubt that his support for her had been crucial, helping her to survive the stresses and strains of a political career and of Number 10. He died in June 2003 at the age of 88. By that date Lady Thatcher had exited the political stage. In March 2002 when she was 76, her doctors ordered her on health grounds to do no more public speaking, after she had had a series of small strokes, and it was realised she was having serious memory problems. She continued to make



204 After Number 10

occasional public appearances while her office would issue short statements, such as obituary tributes, and she videotaped a tribute to Ronald Reagan played at his funeral in Washington DC in 2004 which she attended. But her political career was now over. In 2008 Carol Thatcher published another book, A Swim-On Part in the Goldfish Bowl, in which she revealed her mother was suffering from dementia. Her former press spokesmen, Bernard Ingham, said in 2007 she had ‘no short-term memory left, which is absolutely tragic’. ‘God only knows what she would think of David Cameron if she knew what was going on’, he added.13 In her eighties with failing health and becoming increasingly frail she has been taken to hospital several times in recent years. But she can still arouse controversy as in the furious response in the Labour Party to leaks in 2006 that Tony Blair was planning to provide a state funeral for her, and the criticisms from both left and right when Gordon Brown invited Lady Thatcher for talks and tea in Number 10, and to pose for the cameras with him on the famous doorstep in September 2007. Brown’s hospitality did not stop her friends from letting it become known in 2009 she was ‘appalled’ by his handling of the economy, thought he was a ‘disaster’ as prime minister, and believed Labour governments always end in economic crisis. In April 2009, as the 30th anniversary of her accession to power loomed, she defended her record in Scotland, insisting she had no regrets about what she had done and claiming she had been right to introduce the poll tax. She was still a hate figure there, and the Scottish Conservative Party had collapsed and never recovered following her time in office.14 Nineteen years after leaving Number 10 – years of anger, frustration, resentment, conflict and pathos – there was still a sort of electrical charge around Margaret Thatcher. She has been called ‘the least dignified ex-prime minister of all time’.15 Her personality and character, the circumstances of her removal from office, the bitter and factionalised state of Tory politics in the period, and the way in which the modern media covers politics, hyping up personalities, conflict and drama, helps to explain this judgment. It had not been a quiet and serene post-premiership, nor had it been a constructive one, but it had been one impossible to ignore.

John Major (left office 2 May 1997) John Major left office as Conservative prime minister with dignity and probably some relief in May 1997 after his party crashed to one of the worst general election defeats in its history. His party lost more than half its MPs, with seven Cabinet ministers losing their seats, and was reduced to 165 MPs, while its vote-share fell 11 points to 30 per cent. His Labour opponents won a huge landslide. Major had not expected to win, but the scale of the defeat was a shock. He and his wife had already packed their belongings in the Number 10 flat and were prepared to leave. He left a




bottle of champagne for the Blairs with a brief note saying: ‘It’s a great job – enjoy it.’ Speaking outside Number 10 for the last time he said ‘when the curtain falls it is time to get off the stage’ and announced he was going to step down as leader of the Conservative Party. After formally relinquishing the premiership at Buckingham Palace, he drove to the Oval, lunched with friends and family, and watched cricket in the sunshine. That evening back at his house in Huntingdon over a lengthy supper and several bottles of wine with his family in the garden, with no red boxes and no immediate crises, he felt ‘a huge surge of relief that my life was my own again, and that I could once again control it’. He was, he says, ‘reconciled to leaving Downing Street’. In a very human moment, while awaiting the slaughter on the evening of polling day, he had wandered round the garden of his constituency home quietly noting the work that needed to be done, the shrubs that needed pruning and the space where he could plant some fruit trees. Friends came on the Sunday for a party that turned out to be ‘a very jolly wake’. At the end of his first weekend out of office Major went to bed thinking ‘not of what had been, but of what was yet to come’. ‘Life goes on’ was how he ended his autobiography a couple of years later, saying he had loved being prime minister but recognised and accepted it was very definitely all over.16 Only 54 when he stepped down Major was the youngest ex-prime minister for a century. Becoming prime minister in 1990 at the age of 47, he knew he would be an ex-PM within two parliaments and in his mid-fifties, unless something extraordinary happened, and planned accordingly from the outset to be prepared for the day he would leave office. ‘Senior politicians spend only a limited time in the sun’, he later wrote, ‘and I did not want to leave the front line of politics as a husk, bereft of everything but a backward glance to memories of my political noontide.’ There would still be a life to be lived, he recognised. He had carefully protected his non-political interests, in sport, cinema, theatre, music, gardening and, above all, books, and his personal friendships, hoping to provide ‘a sense of balance for the life after high office’. When he had won re-election in 1992, against the odds, he realised a fifth straight Conservative election victory was unlikely – ‘we had stretched the democratic elastic as far as it would go’. Shortly afterwards the Conservatives’ electoral fortunes nose-dived and he rapidly became the least-respected PM in polling history (up to that time).17 Major had come close to quitting office before he was finally evicted by the electorate. He had to be talked out of resigning after the ERM disaster on ‘Black Wednesday’ in September 1992. In a unique episode in 1995 he became the only prime minister voluntarily to put his own job at risk by resigning the party leadership and challenging his opponents within the party to ‘put up or shut up’. Depressed and frustrated by bitter party infighting and constant sniping at his leadership, he was prepared to resign. He obtained only three more votes (218) than the minimum he had privately



206 After Number 10

decided would trigger his resignation – a third of Tory MPs refused to back him, either by voting for his opponent (John Redwood), abstaining or spoiling their ballots – and the manoeuvre did not heal the factional divide. With hindsight (in 2002) he said his 1995 ‘back me or sack me’ challenge had been in vain and admitted that, had he foreseen the party’s electorallydamaging ‘factional madness’ and ‘war of attrition’ would continue, he would have resigned outright at that time, handed over to a successor and gone to the backbenches.18 Losing so heavily in 1997 confirmed Major’s intention to go immediately, a decision his wife, Norma – angry and upset at the way the party had treated him – strongly supported. Major was weary, worn down ‘emotionally and physically’, as he put it in his memoirs, after 14 years as a minister and six and a half years in Number 10. After 18 years in government, the Conservative Party needed a fresh start under a new leader, he recognised; the ‘baggage’ of his premiership would provide too easy a target for the new Labour government. He felt an immediate clean break was necessary because, if he stayed on until the autumn, a drawn-out leadership struggle might tear the party apart. ‘It would be terrible’, he said, ‘because I would be presiding with no authority over a number of candidates fighting for the crown. It would merely prolong the agony.’ Would-be successors had already started jockeying for position before the general election and some wanted him to leave early so they could make their leadership bids. Major himself wished to see Michael Heseltine, whom he had come to trust and rely on as deputy prime minister after 1995, take over, either as a temporary caretaker or as a longer-term leader. However, some in the party, particularly Lord Cranborne, Tory leader in the Lords, pressed Major to stay on, arguing he had a duty to steer the party into ‘calmer waters’, giving the various contenders time to prove themselves and the party conference an opportunity to pronounce a verdict – hoping also to block Heseltine. Some argued an immediate resignation would mean there was no opportunity to reconsider and revise the party leadership election rules, meaning the choice would lie with the much-reduced parliamentary party, excluding the grass roots. Major was adamant he was not going to hang on like Douglas-Home or Heath, and that there would be only the briefest of interregnums. He stayed at the helm as party leader and leader of the opposition for just seven weeks. He loved the party in the country, he said, but not the parliamentary party, and he was, as Alan Clark put it, ‘in no special mood of gratitude toward his colleagues’. Major played no part in the leadership contest, which was won by William Hague who became Tory leader on 19 June 1997. Heseltine had ruled himself out of running for the leadership after a heart scare, and Major voted for Ken Clarke in the first two rounds of the contest, though he withdrew his backing after Clarke’s tactical alliance of convenience in the third round with the Eurosceptic John Redwood whose disloyalty had stung Major in 1995.19




Major remained in the House of Commons for four more years until 2001, announcing in March 2000 he would stand down at the next general election. In 1999 he was made a Companion of Honour for his work as prime minister on the Northern Ireland peace process and in the same year Norma Major was made a Dame for her charitable work. Interviewed in October 2000, Major said he had ‘huge admiration’ for the House of Lords and for the people who worked there but that it was unlikely he would himself accept a peerage. He wanted, he said, ‘a fire break from politics’, though he was careful to add ‘I don’t think one ever says no for ever’. In May 2004, giving evidence to the Commons Public Administration Select Committee, he disclosed he had declined a peerage because he was not interested in having one just for the title and was not prepared to attend the House of Lords every day as a working member of a legislative body: ‘I have left politics; I am out of politics; I have moved on’. Unlike Attlee’s notion of ‘the rate for the job’, Major argued no award should be automatic or ‘come with the rations’. ‘Automaticity’, he told the committee, ‘is a bad idea whether it is automatic peerages for former prime ministers or automatic gongs for other people.’ There were press claims he was ‘desperate’ to become a Knight of the Garter, with stories he was being snubbed either because of revelations about his affair with Edwina Currie or because of royal displeasure over his alleged dithering over a replacement for the Royal Yacht Britannia in the run-up to the 1997 election. Major claimed in his autobiography he supported a new yacht but that the then Chancellor Ken Clarke was the obstacle. Seven KGs were awarded from 1997 to 2003 (including to a former defence chief, a former head of the Foreign Office, a former Cabinet Secretary and a former Labour Cabinet minister) before he received his in 2005 and became Sir John Major.20 At least one previous former British PM paid a former mistress to keep out of the way abroad; John Major saw his publish vengeful diaries. Great publicity was given in 2002 to Edwina Currie’s account of an extramarital affair with Major in the mid-1980s, when both were Conservative MPs and junior ministers. He had long feared it would be made public and he was fortunate it had not come out when he was a minister or prime minister, or after the ill-fated ‘Back to Basics’ campaign. He knew he was sitting on a powder keg of a secret that could have exploded at any time and blown him out of office. Mrs Currie had been deeply hurt by being left out of his government and by not even being mentioned in the index to his autobiography, published in 1999. The news took friends, former colleagues and the public by surprise. All Major could do was batten down the hatches and wait for the storm to blow over. In the only comment he made at the time he described the affair as the most shameful event of his life and disclosed that Norma Major had long known about it and had forgiven him. Major’s autobiography was a surprise bestseller, selling 200,000 copies, with the advance he received for the book reported to be somewhere



208 After Number 10

between £400,000 and £600,000. He said he wrote it to ‘draw a line’ under the past so he could then move forward. ‘Losing the [1997] election was painful, of course’, he admitted in an interview when his memoirs were published, ‘but you can’t let yourself be destroyed. You have to get on with it … Yesterday is finished and tomorrow is what matters most.’ Unlike the Thatcher memoirs there is no malice or bitterness – they were not the ‘stab-in-the-back memoirs’ beloved of Sunday newspaper serialisations. Roy Jenkins ranked them in the ‘higher range’ of political memoirs, saying they were ‘often self-critical and never boastful’. As Robert Taylor comments, they are ‘often painfully honest and rather endearing, well-written and revealing memoirs’ in which Major, while pointing out his successes, seems to regard himself as ultimately a disappointment as prime minister and is candid and self-deprecating about his failures, shortcomings and regrets (‘I rarely found my own authentic voice in politics. I was too conservative, too conventional. Too safe, too often. Too defensive. Too reactive … too often on the back foot’). In the course of piecing together his family’s history for the book – a colourful and tangled story – he discovered he had two previously-unknown half-siblings.21 Major once admitted that while writing his memoirs was ‘cathartic’ his next book – More Than a Game (2007), a social history of cricket up to the early 20th century – was ‘pure pleasure’. Attlee used to check the cricket scores on the Number 10 telex machine and Douglas-Home played some first-class cricket as a promising amateur and toured with the MCC as a young man. But there has not been a British prime minister more profoundly interested in cricket than Major, and he is the first ex-PM to write a book about it. After leaving Number 10 he served as president of Surrey County Cricket Club 2000–02 and as a member of the MCC’s committee 2001–04 and since 2005. ‘Since leaving office’, wrote the man who used to have messages about the Test match scores passed to him during Cabinet meetings, ‘I have been able to step back into the pleasures of cricket as if it had never been interrupted by the rude reality of politics’. The book is highly readable, engaging and amusing, his love of the game shining through, and it was warmly reviewed. There are some elegiac autobiographical elements to it and a strong argument made for cricket as a force for social cohesion. In 2007 Major was reported to be at work on another book, and it was revealed he had written drafts of several unfinished novels and that he also wrote some poetry. Copies of a poem he wrote about cricketer Colin Cowdrey were auctioned for charity in 2009.22 Life outside Downing Street was extremely profitable for Major. Press reports described him as a millionaire before he had been out of office for even a year, with his six-figure book deal and with large sums for lectures on the international circuit after he signed up with the Washington Speakers’ Bureau. A 1998 report said he could command up to £36,000 for a speech, an eight-day trip to the US reported as making him £160,000. Later, a 2002




report put the figure at around £28,000 per speech and a 2007 report mentioned fees ‘in excess of £25,000’ as an after-dinner speaker. Major also made unremunerated speeches to political, educational, charitable and voluntary sector audiences in the UK, and from time to time similar ones overseas. While he was still an MP, the Register of Members’ Interests listed 12 US trips in 1999 and 2000 with other visits to speak in Hong Kong, Singapore, Ireland, Germany, Kuwait, Bermuda, Spain, Switzerland, France and Saudi Arabia, speaking to organisations as diverse as Chase Manhattan, American Express, Business Week, the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and the National Bank of Kuwait.23 In 2002 the Majors were said to own three properties: their family home in Huntingdon, a £3 million penthouse apartment in London and a £400,000 holiday home in Norfolk. By that time Major was a busy international business figure, reported as making one million pounds a year. A press story in 1998 claimed he was in talks about a £500,000 p.a. part-time job as an adviser with a US financial firm. He was a member of the European board of the Carlyle Group, a powerful but discreet American investment firm with international business interests, including the defence sector, 1998–2005, serving as chairman of Carlyle Europe 2001–04. He was chairman of the European advisory board of the US-based Emerson Electric Company since 1999, a senior adviser to Credit Suisse since 2001, a member of the European board of Siebel Systems Inc. 2001–03, and served on the International Advisory board of the National Bank of Kuwait. From 2000 to 2003 he was a non-executive director of the UK firm the Mayflower Corporation, a car component and bus company, and he was reported as losing over £200,000 of his personal investment in the company when it went bust in 2004. Mayflower’s chief executive said in 1999 that what Major ‘brings is the ability to open doors around the world at the highest level’. Many senior US former political insiders and leaders have been on the Carlyle Group’s payroll, to help with strategic global networking. ‘I advised them on what was going on around the world’, is how Major described his role. ‘I would represent them, I would do a whole range of things – but I would not lobby for them, and I did not introduce them to people.’24 Major fitted in much charity work as a president, patron or ambassador for causes including the Sight Savers Appeal, the National Asthma Appeal, Macmillan Cancer Relief, Mercy Ships, Deafblind UK, the British and Commonwealth Cricket Charitable Trust, and others. He sits on bodies like the Ditchley Council, the Atlantic Partnership, the InterAction Council (Tokyo), the Peres Center for Peace (Israel), the Baker Institution (USA), and the Institute of Sports Sponsorship, among others. Asked whether, money aside, sitting on business boards did not seem limited, even trifling, for an ex-PM, Major said in 2007, ‘It’s a complete fallacy to think the only satisfaction you can have in a job is if you’re running the country.’ He is more relaxed



210 After Number 10

and less care-worn, more at ease with himself than he was as prime minister – ‘a striking advertisement for the joys of not being in office’, says John Sergeant. According to his friend Chris Patten, Major is ‘so happy now. It’s extraordinary. Like a man liberated.’ However, he remains a driven man, reported as starting work at 6 am on most days, with a full diary and much international business travel (spending five to six months of the year abroad).25 With his 1997 defeat behind him Major did not disappear from the political scene entirely but kept a low profile and largely stayed out of front-line politics. He had seen the consequences of doing a ‘Thatcher’ or a ‘Heath’ and was not anxious to add to the problems of the Conservative Party and the leaders who came after him. He appeared reconciled to the political part of his life coming to a close. He continued to find time for the Commons in his first four years out of office, speaking regularly from the backbenches with authority and assurance on Northern Ireland, the economy, Europe, constitutional issues, Iraq, criminal justice legislation, the hunting bill and the national lottery. In 1999 he won the annual Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year award. After leaving the Commons in 2001, he made his voice heard through television interviews, such as ‘Breakfast with Frost’ or the BBC’s ‘Andrew Marr Show’, the occasional press interview, and from time to time by writing newspaper articles. In the 2001 and 2005 general elections he spent much time quietly going round the country speaking for individual Tory candidates in their constituencies. Asked in 2004 what was the best thing about not being prime minister, Major replied: being able to say, without embarrassment, ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I’d like time to think about that’. He said he enjoyed the freedom of being out of politics and being able to return to personal interests. ‘An ex-prime minister’s a rather unusual fish in politics’, he told Michael Cockerell in 2007. ‘If they say nothing, what are they doing there? If they say something, there’s every chance it will be construed as an oblique attack on your successor. So it is extremely difficult to have a role that isn’t capable of severe misinterpretation.’ It was best, he insisted, to move on and ‘get out of the way’ after leaving Number 10: ‘you’d only be used one way or the other to embarrass your successor’. ‘I’ve lost my appetite for being part of domestic politics’, he told Andrew Marr in 2005 – but he was still keenly interested in them, he added. ‘I view politics now through the eyes of an outsider’, was how he described himself in 2007. When David Cameron backed the suggestion that Major be invited to stand as the Tory candidate for Mayor of London in that year, he was quick to squash the idea: he ‘believes his political future is behind him’, a spokesman for Sir John was quoted as saying, and he had ‘no intention of returning to politics’.26 Major’s ‘behaviour towards his old party’, commented Matthew Parris, ‘has been impeccable – standing supportive but a little apart, refraining from back-seat driving or embarrassing and patronising his successors, but




allowing himself just the hint of a comment on this or that when it really seems to matter.’ He consistently argued after the 1997 meltdown that the Conservatives had to reconnect with and appeal again to ‘mainstream voters’. Elections could not be won from the right if the centre were lost. He regretted not having taken on the right-wing and violently Eurosceptic groups in the party more forcefully when he was prime minister. He warned Hague that moving further to the right spelled ‘ruin’, though his advice was not heeded. He went along with the party line against joining the single currency but argued that giving in to those Tories, including Thatcher, who wanted to renegotiate the UK’s membership of the EU or walk away from it altogether would be ‘madness’ and condemn the party to long-term opposition. Hague ‘may have to make changes that will affront previous generations of Conservatives’, he argued in 1999, ‘and as he does so his predecessors must look on with tolerance and offer him the support he needs.’ It took three successive election defeats and a lengthy period in opposition before the party finally learned the necessary political lessons.27 When Thatcher came out in support of Iain Duncan Smith’s bid for the Tory leadership in 2001, Major made known his backing for Ken Clarke, attacking Duncan Smith – a thorn in his government’s side over Europe – as divisive and disloyal. At the same time he hit out at the ‘immense damage’ he said Thatcher was doing to the party, pointing out the poor economic legacy he had inherited from her as prime minister, and condemning her for inciting backbench rebels like Duncan Smith in the 1990s. He did little publicly to support him during his tenure of the leadership but, in 2003, Major said MPs plotting to oust the hapless Duncan Smith as leader were damaging the party, though – after a vote of confidence forced him out – admitted the party was right to replace him. Major was a member of the advisory panel of former leaders and senior figures (also including Ken Clarke, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith) – dubbed the ‘council of elders’ – that Michael Howard set up when he assumed the leadership to demonstrate party unity.28 In 2005 Major was sorry to see Ken Clarke knocked out of the Tory leadership race, saying he would have made ‘a very fine leader’ and prime minister. While not disclosing his actual choice, he made enough comments about the need for a ‘one nation’ and ‘centrist’ appeal to suggest he was supporting David Cameron who became an MP only in 2001 just as Major was leaving the Commons, rather than David Davis. He said the right-wing of the party had had far too much influence, and described himself as increasingly comfortable by the day with the party and the new direction in which it was headed. Cameron was making the party more attractive and electable, he believed, and he urged him not to water down his beliefs to appease the Tory right. The right were ‘still singing songs from the 1980s’ and were out of date and out of touch, Major told Sky News in 2006; Cameron needed to ‘push the right wing away’ in the same way that Tony



212 After Number 10

Blair had dealt with the Labour left a decade earlier. Criticism from the likes of Lord (Norman) Tebbit, Major argued, helped to show the electorate the party really was changing. Cameron, he admitted, might be a little to the right of his own position and a bit more ‘hawkish’ than he was, but he did not have to agree with everything he did to be a strong supporter of him. Noting that Cameron was better at handling the media than he had been and was ‘a very attractive political package’, Major said in 2007 ‘I talk to him and see him, I don’t impose myself on him.’29 Major played the good party man by regularly turning his guns on Labour, in the process defending his own record and achievements. He has been a strong critic of New Labour’s obsession with spin – calling it ‘the pornography of politics’ – attacking the manipulation of government information, the politicisation of the civil service and the undermining of parliament. He accepted the hereditary principle was dead but called for a more independent and more powerful, but not elected, upper chamber to strengthen checks on the executive. Devolution to Scotland, introduced for short-term Labour Party advantage, had brought with it political, constitutional and financial anomalies and problems, he insisted, and put the future of the UK itself in danger. Labour was more ‘sleazy’ than the Tories had been during his premiership, he claimed, arguing the problem under Blair was ‘institutional’ and not just a matter of individual MPs’ behaviour and was closer to the prime minister himself.30 After Gordon Brown took over in 2007, Major condemned his government’s proposals to hold terrorism suspects for 42 days without charge and warned against ‘an intrusive state with authoritarian tendencies’. As the economic crisis hit, he said he felt some ‘human sympathy’ for the embattled Brown but was quick to accuse Labour of economic mismanagement and of squandering the golden economic legacy the Conservatives had left them in 1997. He weighed in too with nonpartisan elder statesman-type interventions, arguing in 2008–09 for external auditing of MPs expenses, for a reduction in the number of ministers and for more outside talent to be brought into government, and for a better deal for injured servicemen.31 In November 2009 there was speculation that Major might return to front-line politics if the Conservatives won the next election. Giving evidence to the Commons Public Administration select committee, he referred to his post-1997 career as a ‘sabbatical’ and, asked about going to the House of Lords, replied: ‘I have never ruled that out’. The Daily Mail reported that Tory leader David Cameron admired Major, and carried a story that Major might resume his political career, perhaps by being offered a nondepartmental brief in a future Conservative government, with a coordinating role. He would add strength and ballast to a Tory frontbench team light on government experience after a long period spent in opposition.32 There are obvious historical precedents for former Conservative prime ministers returning to office in such a way.




Major seemed to have made the transition from Number 10 to postprime ministerial life successfully. He cares about his legacy and about how history will judge him, and has regrets about what he was not able to achieve and about his mistakes and missed opportunities when in power. But he has been forward-looking, unbitter and not dwelt too long upon the past, and he has found many new activities to throw himself into and gain satisfaction and reward from. His personal popularity has been high and he has retained his famed decency and ‘ordinariness’. He has not been a divisive figure and has not evoked in his own party the sort of hostility his two Tory predecessors generated in their post-premierships. He has been able to command an audience and respect for his views. He has not hankered after a return to Number 10, making it clear he did not wish to do it again, and has got on with his life in a constructive fashion.

Tony Blair (left office 27 June 2007) Tony Blair was the most successful Labour prime minister when he stepped down in 2007, having won three successive general elections (two with landslide majorities) and clocked up 10 years and 56 days in Number 10. He had become prime minister in 1997 just days before his 44th birthday, and was only 54 when he left office, as was John Major. The voters had returned Blair to office in 2005, with a majority reduced to 66 seats. His personal approval rating had, however, plummeted: he had last had a positive (+2) net satisfaction rating in April 2003 compared with +12 in January 2002 and +60 when he was first elected in 1997. When Blair left office, 60 per cent of voters said they were dissatisfied with the way he was doing his job, with only 33 per cent saying they were satisfied, a net rating of -27, the same as John Major’s at the end of his premiership, but not as bad as Mrs Thatcher’s -46 at the end of her time in office.33 The two premiers in the previous century who had quit of their own accord (Baldwin and Wilson) had been older and physically and mentally in less good shape than Blair. There had been much wear and tear from his decade in office, but his only significant health problem had been a relatively minor heart scare, an irregular heart beat, in 2003 that had been fixed in an operation the following year. Twenty-four of Blair’s predecessors in Number 10 had first become prime minister at an older age than he was when he left office. Blair’s party had not in a formal sense lost confidence in him or forced him out, in the way Thatcher had been overthrown. But he had faced considerable and mounting pressure to step down, with Gordon Brown and his supporters fighting a war of attrition from an early stage and his wider position in the parliamentary party much weakened after the Iraq war. Brown believed they had an agreement that Blair would make way for him at some point in the second term, expecting a 2004 handover. After the 2001



214 After Number 10

election it was reported he thumped the table, shouting, ‘When are you going to move off and give me a date?’ and ‘I want the job now!’ With his frustration and resentment growing, he was demanding ‘when are you going to f*** off?’ by 2004. Blair had never settled in his mind how long he would serve, telling Alastair Campbell that two terms or eight years ‘was about all you get in the modern world’ and ‘you have to know when to go’, and in 2002 he considered announcing that he would not fight the next election. His friend Bill Clinton had advised him to go ‘when they’re still asking for more’ and in particular ‘don’t go like Thatcher’. But his wife, Cherie, who hated Brown, was strongly opposed to an early departure. Blair ‘wobbled’ in the spring of 2004 – demoralised, unwell, experiencing some family worries, unpopular, facing criticism over Iraq and problems within the Labour Party, and harassed by the Brownites – and came close to quitting, but recovered his confidence, zest and appetite for office. There are claims he would have left office before the 2005 election had Brown played along, either by supporting his public-sector reforms or by letting him take the country into the Euro. Brown would not agree but equally, seemed ultimately willing to wound but not kill, letting his supporters pile on the pressure and destabilise Blair but flinching from finally pulling the trigger himself.34 No previous British prime minister had ever pre-announced their departure in the way that Blair did when on 30 September 2004 he announced in a TV broadcast he would fight the next election and, if re-elected, serve ‘a full third term’ before stepping down before the election due in 2009 or 2010; he did not, however, specify a date for his departure. He hoped this statement would not make him a lame duck. Though he started to lose authority, he continued to push forward with a radical agenda. At the end, he doubted whether he had done the right thing but felt the upheaval could have been worse had he not signalled his intentions. The move did not satisfy the Brownites, and their plotting continued, culminating in the so-called ‘September coup’ in 2006, after which Blair bowed to the inevitable and announced that that year’s party conference would be his last, privately assuring a disbelieving Brown he would go in the summer of 2007. Pressure was put on Blair to depart in March 2007, before local, Scottish and Welsh elections in May, but he held off announcing he would resign until 10 May, stating he would leave office on 27 June. Brown desperately wanted his endorsement, which Blair in the end gave after toying about a possible rival, notably David Miliband, but recognising there was no real alternative and, at some level, feeling that – despite all they had gone though – he owed the succession to Brown and wanted him to have it, as long as he would continue to support the New Labour project. Brown was ‘crowned’ after he had sewn up the party and frightened off serious rivals. The token left-wing challenger failed to secure sufficient nominations even to force a ballot.




Seldon described Blair as leaving at ‘more or less the moment of his choosing’. He had wanted to carry on into the third term as long as he could. But a close aide told an interviewer in June 2007, ‘He’s been pushed out, and it rankles.’ ‘I’m not saying I couldn’t have gone on for a couple of years more, I could have’, Blair said. ‘But ten years is long enough.’ ‘Past a certain point’, he mused, ‘it almost doesn’t matter whether you’re doing the right thing or the wrong thing. People get tired and say, “Time to move on.”’ If he could have stayed on a year or so longer, he would have done so, is a reasonable conclusion.35 For some previous tenants of Number 10 leaving came as a shock and sometimes at short notice, but Blair’s departure could be more carefully planned. The purchase of a £3.6 million house in Connaught Square in London in 2004 was a sign the Blairs were looking ahead to the time they would leave Downing Street and would need somewhere to live – and would need an income to pay a huge mortgage. At a mundane level, Cherie Blair has said the family packing in 2007 ‘took months’, suggesting the process started before the official announcement of his resignation date. There are claims that Blair held a private dinner with Lord Browne, then the chief executive of BP, only a month after he had been re-elected in 2005, at which he discussed life after Downing Street. In January 2006 Bill Clinton admitted he had discussed Blair’s future with him and had told him there was ‘a lot of good you can do in the world’ after leaving office. ‘There was no set formula’, was Clinton’s advice. ‘But if I were you, I’d organise a foundation and I’d do what you found rewarding and cared passionately about when you were in office. Life is too short, but you’re going to have so much fun and you can really love your wife.’ In 2006 there were reports that Jonathan Powell, Blair’s chief of staff, had been sounding out the prospects for creating a Blair School of Government, to be based at the LSE, as a British equivalent of Harvard’s Kennedy School and to provide a platform for Blair, but the idea fell flat. A memo – leaked, to Number 10’s embarrassment, in September 2006 – showed Blair’s inner circle planning he should bow out like a rock star, ‘with the crowds wanting more’ while he ‘won’t even play that last encore’, and with a grid of media appearances and visits drawn up for a sort of farewell tour. It was claimed Blair had not seen the document but, as Seldon points out, ‘the staged manner of his departure bore striking similarities to the leaked paper’.36 Figures close to Blair – including Jonathan Powell, Baroness Sally Morgan (his political secretary until 2005) and Liz Lloyd (deputy chief of staff), together with Cherie Blair – were reported as informally discussing what was to come after Downing Street for a year or more before Blair left office. ‘What’s next is a very discreet part of the operation’, one senior source was quoted as saying in January 2007. ‘People in Number 10 do not think that it is appropriate for government time to be spent discussing the prime minister’s personal plans. It’s so difficult to talk about it without implying that



216 After Number 10

what we are doing now is pointless. The conversations happen in spare time.’ Blair, it was claimed, could not himself bear to talk about life after Number 10 – ‘I’m not saying that as the time approaches, I won’t [make plans]’, he told an interviewer in March 2007, ‘but you have to give this job your all.’ There was a belief a prime minister had to convince right to the end he still mattered in government and was working at full tilt, and not do or say anything to suggest he was easing his foot off the gas. ‘You can’t start agreeing to do jobs when you’re still doing the job you’re doing’, is how he put it. Blair was also said to be ‘sensitive to the charge that he should not use his office to plot a potentially lucrative career’.37 ‘The one thing I couldn’t do’, Blair said shortly before he resigned, ‘is potter around the garden or even just concentrate on making money.’ He had said in a radio interview at the end of 2006 the most important thing was to find a meaningful role and do something after leaving the premiership that had ‘a real purpose to it … a real life purpose’. The idea of a Blair Foundation was central to the plans that were developed. As part of the work of building it Martha Greene – a businesswoman and a family friend and adviser who had helped with the purchase of the Connaught Square house in 2004, putting together for them a ‘business plan’ and highlighting Tony Blair’s long-term ‘prospects’ and arranging Cherie Blair’s foreign lecture tours – registered the domain name www.blairfoundation.org in November 2006. ‘Clinton is our role model’, admitted a close Blair adviser. ‘He remains a huge player on the international stage. Tony is still a big hitter and will be for years to come. We are looking closely at how Clinton did it.’ A globe-trotting role on the international stage appealed to Blair and offered the advantage of cutting loose from the domestic political scene. There are claims the Blairs thought about buying a house in the USA, which would help get him out of the political way in Britain and fit in with plans to go on the US lecture circuit. He had started to think about a role in the Middle East by the end of 2006 and talked to President George W. Bush about it. By early 2007 championing development in Africa, climate-change and the environment, and inter-faith issues, in addition to the Middle East and the inevitable writing of the memoirs, were all being talked about as part of the Blair post-Number 10 portfolio. The line at that stage was he would stand down as the MP for Sedgefield at the next election and would not go to the House of Lords, a chamber he was said always to have despised. The Lords ‘is not my scene’ Blair was reported to have once said. Nor had he ever been a ‘House of Commons man’, showing little affection for or interest in the institution. It was impossible to imagine him as a backbencher again, and he would not need the platform. He wanted what Seldon called an ‘action role’ after Number 10, or in Jackie Ashley’s words, ‘one more epic role’.38 Blair was the first prime minister in modern times not to issue a resignation honours list after he left Number 10. He had apparently accepted that




any such list would – for the first time – have had to be vetted by the independent House of Lords Appointments Commission but, recognising it would rake up the rows and controversy over the ‘cash for honours’ affair and police inquiry, decided to duck the issue and avoid the likely flak. History would suggest the former prime minister is unlikely to see out the remainder of his days as plain ‘Mr Blair’. A firm monarchist who greatly admired the Queen and was very proper in his relations with the Royal Family, Blair would be unlikely to have any hang-ups about accepting a top honour. There has been some speculation he could be offered the Thistle, because of his Scottish family roots, maliciously spun by some in the media as a way for the Palace to snub him – but he would probably prefer the Garter in line with most of the recent former PMs. Three new Knights of the Garter were installed in 2008, and Palace sources were reported as saying it was ‘too early’ for Blair to be appointed.39 Wilson received his KG within weeks of quitting, but Thatcher had been five years out of Downing Street before she got hers, and both Callaghan and Major had to wait eight years. If he does become Sir Tony Blair KG, the media reaction to Cherie becoming ‘Lady Blair’ should be predictably cruel. Blair became the first prime minister since Eden in 1957 to quit the Commons immediately on leaving Number 10, triggering a by-election. He cited the huge challenge of the new role he was immediately taking up as the Quartet’s Middle East envoy, representing the UN, the EU, the USA and Russia. Spending between a week and ten days each month on it, operating from headquarters in a luxury hotel in Jerusalem, Blair insists he could not have carried out the Middle East role and kept his seat. It is an unpaid role, though the UN and others fund the costs, including the staff of 13 diplomats at his disposal. Although widely seen as a pro-Israel prime minister, Blair was strongly committed to the Middle-East peace process in office, pressing George W. Bush and the US to play a more active part in seeking a solution. Some commentators suggested he was driven by a desire to make good after the controversial Iraq war, though his closeness to the US and that war were negative factors, compromising his standing in the eyes of many Palestinians and Arabs. What he brings to the role is immense self-belief, devotion to the cause and a conviction that the IsraelPalestine issue is fundamental to peace between the West and the world of Islam, reflecting his broader faith agenda; knowledge of all the key players and of the issues involved; and experience in successful conflict resolution in Northern Ireland. Though he has shown signs of wanting to play a wider role in terms of ‘negotiating peace’, his terms of reference are limited to helping the Palestinians revive and develop their economy, build their institutions and prepare for statehood, and to address their security, law and order issues. Even if there is a Middle East settlement, he will not be the crucial figure brokering or reaching it. The argument is that improving the ‘reality on the



218 After Number 10

ground’ will help create the context within which a peace settlement is possible. Blair has had some successes, including lobbying world leaders and co-chairing a conference to secure $7 billion in pledges of donors’ aid for projects on the West Bank. On the other hand, big problems with Israeli checkpoints and settlements, the deteriorating situation in Gaza, and a stalled peace process mean he has had to admit (in June 2009) that, overall, significant progress has still not been made. Questions have been asked about his commitment to the role, given the many other jobs and interests he already has and additional ones he may take on in the future. His predecessor resigned in frustration, and the job has the character of a sort of diplomatic ‘mission impossible’. Blair rushed immediately into this job after leaving Number 10 – perhaps, some critics thought, to ease the sting of the loss of office and because he wanted another ‘big cause’ – but he has found no diplomatic envoy or broker, no matter how big a celebrity and how charismatic – has the clout, scope and influence of a head of government. When Blair’s local constituency agent, John Burton, put the idea of writing books to him, it apparently ‘went down like a lead balloon’. ‘He looked at me’, said Burton, ‘and grimaced at the thought.’ However, the urge to tell his version of events and the need to make money inevitably won out, and in his final days in office, he corresponded with Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s biographer, about ideas for his memoirs. The publishing deal signed with Random House in October 2007 was worth a reported £4.6 million. Some close associates questioned his ability and willingness to apply himself to the task – ‘he is a talker not a writer’, said one – and in February 2009 it was reported he had written only four chapters. His problem was he did not want to undermine Gordon Brown while he was still in office, promising to be ‘frank but not disloyal’. He was said to be unenthusiastic about Cherie’s decision to publish her own memoirs in 2008 (reported as making her £1 million), concerned about the possible political fallout from accounts of the Blair-Brown feud, and for the same reason intervening with Alastair Campbell, his former press secretary, to tone down his diaries, published in July 2007. He has said he will not publish his own book while Brown is still in power, but he is believed to be hoping to have it ready before the next election, when it will appear if the Conservatives win. Campbell has promised to publish his diaries in full one day, and it may well be they will provide a more revealing and riveting account of the Blair era than his master’s own tome.40 In office Blair had identified climate change and Africa (aid and development) as big long-term issues that politicians had a moral obligation to address, and had pushed hard on both with the Americans and the G8. It became fairly easy for journalists to write stories about his ‘one-man mission to save the planet’ as he continued with this agenda after leaving Number 10. He worked with a team of international experts backed by the




Climate Change Group to prepare a report (published in July 2009) with a plan for big cuts in carbon emissions and investment in new technologies. ‘One thing Blair does have is fantastic contacts and access – way above most other people you could imagine’, one environmental campaigner said. ‘It’s really helpful to get climate change into the offices of world leaders. This is where the difference will really be made.’ ‘The experts are providing technical knowledge and specialist insights’, Blair has explained, ‘but what I am trying to do is guide it politically.’ He has been active as an international evangelist and advocate on the issue in meetings with leaders as he travels around the world.41 The Africa Governance Initiative forms another strand of his and his office’s work, with Blair himself visiting and acting as an unpaid adviser to the Rwandan government and to the government of Sierra Leone, and project teams dispatched to both countries, with ambitious aims to help build governance and public-policy capacity, attract investment and encourage economic and private-sector development, and work on poverty reduction. Meanwhile, at home, in his own former political backyard – the North East of England – Blair, a big sports fan, has established a Sports Foundation, based in his old constituency home, aiming to encourage more children to participate in sport and boost local grassroots sport by training more coaches. Peter Mandelson once famously said about New Labour that ‘we are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich’. Critics argued that in office Blair was much too impressed by money and the glamour of the wealthy, something he denied, saying ‘if I was desperate to make money I would have done something else’. Cherie Blair seemed more anxious about money and material security, and she was quoted as saying in 2007, ‘Now is the time for us to go and make some money.’ Blair was soon on course to become a multimillionaire out of office. Leaving parliament meant he did not have to make details of his earnings public in the Register of Members’ Interests. There were large outgoings to fund, with the Blairs amassing six properties, including their £3.6 million house in Mayfair, an adjoining £800,000 house bought to form a more secure complex, a £5.7 million small stately home in the country near to Chequers, and a £500,000 Islington flat reportedly bought for their eldest son. In addition, Blair moved his headquarters in 2008 – employing a total of 25 staff – to a building in Grosvenor Square, where he has a ten-year lease costing £550,000 a year.42 Signing up with the Washington Speakers Bureau Blair made more money in his first full week on the North American lecture circuit in October 2007 – £300,000 for four lectures – than in an entire year as prime minister. In November 2007 he was paid a fee of £237,000 for a speech at a banquet organised by a Chinese property company. A speech to 2000 entrepreneurs in Barcelona in 2008 earned him a reported £240,000. By 2009 he was being described as the world’s best-paid speaker, able to pull in more than half a million pounds a month, and earning £400,000 for two half-hour



220 After Number 10

speeches in the Philippines in March of that year (his topic was ‘The Leader as a Nation Builder in a Time of Globalisation’). Some have questioned whether his audiences get value for money. Critics of his China speech said it sounded ‘just like the report of any Chinese county level official’, containing ‘no novelty’ and ‘full of pleasantries, clichés and platitudes’.43 Previous Labour prime ministers had largely avoided collecting lucrative directorships or business appointments in the private sector. Speculation and rumours that Blair might join BP or the board of Rupert Murdoch’s News International corporation proved groundless. He is believed to have turned down approaches from HSBC and Citigroup. Instead in January 2008 he joined one of Wall Street’s best-known banks, JP Morgan, with a brief to provide political and strategic advice and participate in some client events, reportedly earning around £2 million a year for the part-time role. Later that month he took a second job – for at least £500,000 a year – as an adviser to the Swiss insurance firm, Zurich, to assist it on ‘developments and trends in the international political environment’, particularly in relation to climate change. The Advisory Committee on Business Interests, which vets the proposed jobs of former ministers, approved both appointments, stipulating that for one year after leaving office the former PM should not be personally involved in lobbying government ministers or officials on behalf of his new employers or their clients. It also said he should not ‘draw on privileged information that was available to him as prime minister’ in his speaking engagements.44 Blair’s claim he had ‘always been interested in commerce’ was met with some disbelief. He was by background a lawyer without any corporate experience and had left economic issues largely to Gordon Brown. He would not be seeking contracts, close sources indicated, ‘but will exchange advice and opinions only at very senior levels’. Critical MPs called the appointments ‘shameless’ and ‘tawdry’. ‘What does he know about banking anyway?’ protested one Labour MP. ‘What use is he to JP Morgan other than a face and a mouth.’ That was exactly the point. JP Morgan’s chief executive said ‘there are only a handful of people in the world who have the knowledge and relationships that he has’. What these companies are paying for are his glamour and celebrity, international contacts, and ability to open political doors and secure top-level access around the world, not his business acumen.45 In February 2009 ‘Tony Blair Associates’ was set up (with the approval of the Business Interests watchdog committee) to ‘allow him to provide, in partnership with others, strategic advice on a commercial and pro bono basis, on political and economic trends and government reform’. The media reported it critically as ‘the first time a former prime minister has set up a commercial venture with the apparent intention of cashing in on time spent in office’. Blair’s spokesman explained it was to organise better the management of his time and multifarious activities. It was noted that, if




the venture was set up as a simple partnership rather than as a limited company, it would not have to make public its income and profits. News emerged that the firm’s first client was the Government of Kuwait, with a reported seven-figure deal for the provision of advice on good governance. Altogether – with his book deal, lecture fees and business earnings – Blair was said to have earned as much as £15 million in his first two years out of office.46 Blair and his staff give the impression the things that are most important to him in his life after Number 10 are those he is not paid for – the business jobs and speaking engagements are a way to ‘pay the bills’. What matters most, it is said, is his faith work. Blair formally converted to Catholicism in December 2007, though he began a course of instruction for converts while still PM in February of that year. With his wife and children Catholics, and attending mass with them for 20 years, it was a personal decision strongly influenced by family. Sometimes described as the most openly devout premier since Gladstone, he spoke little about his religious faith when in office, admitting it was ‘hugely important’ to him but fearing being labelled a ‘nutter’ or ‘weird’. He said he did not pass a single day without reflecting on the aftermath of the war in Iraq – and he continued to believe the war was the right thing to have done – but his faith was a comfort to him. Alastair Campbell had famously said in Number 10, ‘We don’t do God’; but as an ex-prime minister Blair did God in a big way. The Tony Blair Faith Foundation, launched in May 2008, is central and has been described as ‘the real focus of his post-parliamentary life’. Blair told an interviewer in 2009 he was ‘really, and always have been in a way, more interested in religion than politics’, and claimed the concept of an inter-faith foundation pre-dated him becoming Labour leader and prime minister.47 The foundation – which collected £3.6 million in donations and funding in its first year – aimed to promote greater respect and understanding between the major religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddism, Hinduism and Sikhism), make the case for religion as relevant and a force for good, and counter intolerance and extremism. It supports programmes aimed at encouraging faith groups to work together to tackle malaria in Africa, has established an interfaith schools programme, and has developed a course on faith and globalisation which Blair himself helped to teach at Yale University. Bono, the rock star and humanitarian campaigner, has said he thinks Blair ‘wants to dedicate the rest of his life to decrying the concept of a clash of civilisations’. Blair has said it is not for him a ‘this year and next year’ project: ‘I see this over time as the rest of my life’s work.’48 The more Blair engages in the global faith debate, the harder he will find it to engage in frontline or day-to-day British party politics, not that there is much sign that he wants to. Even before he left office, Blair was clear he would want to stay out of British and internal Labour Party politics, unswervingly support his successor, and not set himself up as a backseat



222 After Number 10

driver or ‘king over the water’. Leaving the Commons would help avoid tension or problems with Brown. ‘I have been reasonably fortunate rarely to receive public “advice” from my predecessors. The job [of prime minister] is difficult enough as it is’, he said in June 2007. He had described, in a 2006 interview, ‘making mischief for whoever comes after’ or ‘causing trouble for your successor’ as ‘the worst form of vanity’.49 Unhappy Blairites were not so disciplined and were responsible for leaks, briefings and stories supposedly revealing Blair’s ‘real’ views. On one account Blair was said in June 2007 to fear Brown could be Labour’s Al Gore and lead the party to defeat at the next election. In October 2007 Blair was said by ‘friends’ to be unhappy with the direction in which Brown was taking the government, complaining about his ‘empty’ conference speech and ‘lack of vision’, though Blair immediately issued a statement denying these reports. He is said to have told former allies he did not want them criticising Brown, though some – such as Charles Clarke, who claimed Blair wanted to set him up as a rival to Brown and even become leader – did not heed his call for restraint. In 2008 Lord Levy, Blair’s friend and former Labour fundraiser, claimed in his memoirs Blair had told him that he was convinced Brown could never beat the Tory leader David Cameron, or match his appeal to ‘Middle England’. In 2009 John Burton, Blair’s former agent in Sedgefield, also said that Blair had told him when he stepped down he did not believe Brown ‘had it in him’ to beat Cameron. In April 2009 Blair’s privately-expressed ‘despair’ at Brown’s introduction of the 50 pence top tax rate, as a vote-costing ‘terrible mistake’, somehow found its way onto the front page of the Daily Telegraph. In August 2008, a secret memo (penned originally in the autumn of 2007) was leaked to the press in which Blair complained of Brown’s ‘lamentable’ and ‘vacuous’ performance, his ‘dissing [of] our own record’, that he had ‘junked the TB [Tony Blair] policy agenda but had nothing to put in its place’, his ‘confusion of tactics and strategy’, and of his incompetence in making the Conservatives look like the party of the future and on course to win the next election. The authenticity of the memo was not denied, but the news it had probably been leaked by a disgruntled Blairite ex-minister, and that Blair himself had sent a muchedited version of it – couched as friendly advice – to Brown in late 2007, did not make the disclosure any less damaging to the government.50 Blair was advising Brown behind the scenes, speaking with him on the telephone about once a month, sending him memos, and meeting occasionally (three times in 2008) for face-to-face talks about various issues including Blair’s work on the Middle East and climate change, and domestic politics. In 2009 he was reported to have seen the prime minister to urge him to hold the Iraq war inquiry in secret, fearing he might be subjected to a sort of ‘show trial’ if it were opened to the public. Downing Street sources insisted the two men ‘have a good relationship’. Blair was also constantly in touch and talking regularly with figures like Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson




– Mandelson ran his own return to government as Business Secretary past Blair in October 2008, who supported the move. Although a trenchant critic of his in the past, Blair (and Alastair Campbell) was drawn into giving private advice to Ken Livingstone in his unsuccessful campaign to remain Mayor of London in 2008. As Brown’s government ran deeper into trouble, Blair did his best to be supportive publicly. Countering reports that he privately admires David Cameron, his view that he was ‘thoroughly unconvinced’ that Cameron ‘has what it takes’ to be prime minister, was reported to the New Statesman. Blair in television interviews praised Brown for his leadership during the economic downturn and said all world leaders were facing ‘tough times’ because of the credit crunch and banking crisis.51 There was much speculation that Europe rather than Westminster might be the scene for Blair’s next big political job. He was an early favourite for the role of president of the EU Council, the new post created by the Lisbon Treaty, after French president Sarkozy started promoting ‘mon ami Tony’ as the ideal candidate in 2007. But in November 2009 the post went instead to the Belgian prime minister Herman Van Rompuy. Blair was interested, it was reported, but only ‘if the job was big enough’, offering scope for him to become Europe’s representative to the world, set the agenda and exert influence on big issues. He was not attracted by the idea of a bureaucratic role, chairing a large number of meetings and shuttling between Europe’s capitals oiling the wheels and piecing together the compromise packages that keep the EU working.52 As prime minister he had regarded EU summits as chores and did not find the mundane details of EU policymaking stimulating. Although the British government and Gordon Brown formally backed his candidacy, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, was reported to be unenthusiastic about ‘President Blair’ and President Sarkozy changed tack. In the end, Blair lost out as the different EU heads of government decided to opt for a low-key ‘fixer’ rather than a more weighty, charismatic and ambitious rival-figure, and because, in the political deal that was struck, the post was claimed by Europe’s centre-right parties. Opposition to Blair partly reflected the legacy of the Iraq war and his closeness to Bush and the USA, as well as disenchantment with his failure to take Britain into the single currency and the Schengen zone, Britain remaining the ‘awkward partner’ under him as under his Tory predecessors. It also counted against him that the smaller EU states tend to be sensitive to key jobs being taken by leaders from the bigger countries. A sense of hyper-activism, restlessness and a continued craving for the limelight mark Blair’s post-premiership. Such is his hectic pace that he has admitted his family see as little of him as when he was in office: ‘I’ve got to rebalance’, he admitted in mid-2008. In early 2008 he was said to have agreed to nearly 500 days of engagements in the year ahead, no longer having civil service gate-keepers to manage the diary and say no on



224 After Number 10

his behalf. A year into his post-Number 10 life, he was said to have told former colleagues he was not missing the premiership and interviewers reported he was ‘relaxed and revelling in his new role’. He remains driven, and the setup in the ‘Office of Tony Blair’ in central London signalled the scale and reach of his ambitions. Blair was young to be an ex-prime minister. When he left the premiership, he still felt fit and capable of holding down the job. What some have called his ‘manic job collecting’ reflects a huge political personality trying to fill the void, and find something to do as challenging and satisfying as being prime minister. It was easy for critics to question his commitment to the Middle East when he was doing so many other things as well: ‘How many jobs does an ex-PM need?’ was the suggestive title of a newspaper article by Andrew Rawnsley. In office he was often criticised for ‘butterflying’ from one thing to another rather than prioritising and sticking with one thing to see it properly through. There is a danger of something similar happening to him now he has left office. With considerable energy, ideas and time to fill, Blair could continue to be an important and influential figure in his post-premiership years, but he may need to be more selective and direct and focus his talents and resources where he really wants to make a difference and can do so.53




10

As in Britain, other democratic states around the world face the question of what comes next for a former government leader – a prime minister or a president – obliged to leave office because they have lost an election, or come to the end of their constitutionally-fixed term, or fallen ill, or lost the backing of their party, or (more rarely) one who chooses to call it a day and voluntarily quits. Just as in Britain, there is no fixed or predetermined role – they have to work it out for themselves, and what they do depends very much on personal choices and on circumstances. In the United States President Taft in 1912 recommended the administration of a lethal ‘dose of chloroform’ to protect the country from the dangers of a come-back and to relieve an ex-president ‘from the burden of thinking how he is to support himself and his family, fix his place in history, and enable the public to pass on to new men and new measures’. Former US presidents, it is said, used to ‘write books, play golf and get sent to funerals’. In contrast Bill Clinton seems caught up in a hyperactive and frenetic post-presidential existence: ‘the pressure for time on his schedule would seem intense to anyone but a sitting president’.1 One historical study claims to identify six recurrent models or categories of former US presidents: the still ambitious (who long for a comeback); exhausted volcanoes (who quietly retire); political dabblers (who give advice, campaign and fund-raise for their party); first citizens (who engage in dignified and non-partisan public service); embracers of a cause (usually a big humanitarian and/or global ‘cause’); and seekers of vindication (those aiming to reverse history’s likely negative verdict on them). These categories are not watertight and individuals may at different times seem to fit under a number of these headings.2 When you leave office, Bill Clinton has said, ‘you lose your power but not your influence’. Some writers argue that in recent decades former presidents can play a bigger role and exert greater influence than in the past. But there is still great individual variation. Age and illness (Alzheimer’s disease) meant Reagan’s post presidency was not an active one. George 226



Comparative Perspectives

Comparative Perspectives 227

H.W. Bush – echoing Jefferson, who said: ‘there is a fullness of time when men should go, and not occupy too long the high ground to which others have the right to advance’ – eschewed the limelight and busied himself with corporate and philanthropic activities. How much he was called on for – or offered – private advice to, or had influence with, his son, President George W. Bush, was anyone’s guess.3

Some former leaders manage to have a continuing ministerial career, serving in the governments of later administrations and under successor leaders. If not ‘at the top’ they remain ‘near the top’. Being head of government may be the culmination of their political careers but it is not the termination. Only a minority of former leaders returns to office in this way. Blondel could trace a subsequent ministerial career for only 70 out of 1,028 world leaders he surveyed in the post-war period (6.8 per cent).4 However, the number or percentage of such cases may be higher in some countries than commonly supposed. We have seen that over a quarter (27.4 per cent) of all British prime ministers have come back after leaving Number 10 and served in the Cabinets of other prime ministers. In Fifth Republic France since 1959 three of the 17 individuals serving as prime minister (excluding the present incumbent) served in the governments of later PMs (17.6 per cent). The French Fifth Republic’s first prime minister (1959–62) Michel Debré, returned to government in 1966, serving until 1973 under several different prime ministers and two presidents as, successively, minister of economics and finance, foreign minister and then defence minister. Fourteen years after leaving the Matignon Laurent Fabius came back into government as economics minister under Lionel Jospin between 2000 and 2002. And Alain Juppé (prime minister 1995–97) was appointed as President Sarkozy’s minister for ecology and sustainable development in May 2007, but lost his job after only a month when he was defeated in parliamentary elections. In Italy the sight of a former prime minister back in government is much more common, reflecting that country’s governmental instability, ‘musical chairs’ politics and frequent ministerial rotations. To give some examples: Emilio Colombo was prime minister 1970–72, and later twice foreign minister (1980–83 and 1992–93); Giuliano Amato was prime minister 1992–93 and 2000–01, but served under other PMs as minister for institutional reforms 1998–99, treasury minister 1999–2000, and minister of the interior 2006–08; Massimo D’Alema was prime minister 1998–2000 before becoming foreign minister and deputy prime minister in Prodi’s 2006 government; Lamberto Dini was prime minister 1995–96 and then foreign minister 1996–2001; Carlo Ciampi, prime minister 1993–94, was treasury minister 1996–99 under two prime ministers, and then became president of the republic; after being prime minister twice, Andreotti was foreign minister for six years in the 1980s before



Back in government

his third and final stint at the head of government (1989–92); Giovanni Goria was prime minister 1987–88, returning as minister of agriculture (1991–92) and then finance minister (1992–93). Former prime ministers reappearing as foreign ministers can occasionally be found in other European states, including Carl Bildt in Sweden (prime minister 1991–94; minister of foreign affairs from 2006), Leo Tindemans in Belgium (prime minister 1974–78; foreign minister 1982–89), and Thorbjorn Jagland in Norway (prime minister 1996–97; foreign affairs minister 2000–01). In Canada, Australia and New Zealand there have been few ‘returning’ prime ministers of this type. After being ousted in a party-caucus coup, Jim Bolger, New Zealand’s National Party PM 1990–97, served briefly as a junior minister in his successor, Jenny Shipley’s, government, as minister of state and associate minister of foreign affairs and trade, before quitting parliament in 1998. Arthur Fadden, who had a brief (two-month) spell as Australian prime minister in 1940 and suffered a crushing election defeat a couple of years later as opposition leader, had more success as treasurer in the second Menzies government formed in 1949 (Menzies led the Liberal Party and Fadden the separate Country Party) retiring in 1958. Less happy was John Gorton’s experience: Australian Liberal PM 1968–71, he faced an internal party challenge and lost a vote of confidence but then immediately stood for and won his party’s deputy leadership, forcing his successor (William McMahon) to appoint him defence minister – tensions and clashes led to him being sacked from the government six months later. Gorton then served in the shadow cabinet for a couple of years under the party leader after McMahon before being dropped, going on to quit the party altogether and fail in his attempt to win a Senate seat as an independent. Only two former PMs have returned to government in Canada. In the 1930s Arthur Meighen, prime minister for two short stints in the 1920s, was minister without portfolio for three years and led for the government in the Senate. Joe Clark was Canada’s youngest-ever prime minister at age 39 enjoying only a brief nine-month tenure as PM before his minority Progressive Conservatives government lost the 1980 general election. Clark was deposed as party leader in 1983. Rated as ‘below-average’ in the Canadian primeministerial league tables, he rebuilt his reputation as an able, successful and respected external affairs minister (1984–91) and then as constitutional affairs minister (1991–93) under his successor, Brian Mulroney. Clark then left domestic politics for five years before he was brought back as party leader in 1998, winning a parliamentary seat in 2000, and finally retiring in 2003.

Other political and public office Even if not in government (ministerial) office, many former leaders go on to hold other official positions and continue to play an active role in public and political life in one way or another.



228 After Number 10

William Howard Taft would have preferred to sit on the US Supreme Court than to be president, and after leaving the White House in 1913 he taught law at Yale before getting his chance when Warren Harding appointed him chief justice in 1921 – and he seems to have enjoyed the nine years he served in that post more than his one term in the presidency. An earlier case of transition to the judicial bench was Edmund Barton, Australia’s first prime minister (1901–03), who had resigned to become a judge of that country’s High Court. Bill Clinton said he did not ‘want to be a judge’ after he left the presidency – but that was surely never remotely an option for him and it is difficult to envisage a latter-day Taft.5 Article 56 of the French constitution accords former presidents the right to sit as lifetime members on the Constitutional Council, which has important legal and advisory functions, but this role is not compatible with holding a parliamentary seat or continued active partisanship. Jacques Chirac sat as a member for the first time in November 2007, only six months after leaving office, but Giscard D’Estaing took up his seat only in 2004, over 20 years after leaving the presidency, having been, among other things, an MP and then MEP. Neither Margret Thatcher nor John Major would entertain the idea of running for mayor of London as former prime ministers, and no one would expect Tony Blair to have held office as mayor of Sedgefield either on his way to Number 10 or afterwards. But a strong local or regional political base is important for French politicians, and after leaving high national office they may have the compensation of power and patronage in their local or regional fiefdom. After leaving the Elysée Giscard D’Estaing served as president of the Auvergne region from 1986 to 2004. Chirac became mayor of Paris in 1977 after his first stint as prime minister (1974–76), holding that post until he became president in 1995. Jacques Chaban-Delmas was prime minister for three years (1969–72) but mayor of Bordeaux for nearly half a century (1947–95) – he was succeeded in that post by Alain Juppé, who continued to hold it after he in turn lost the prime-ministership in 1997. Pierre Messmer was another long-serving regional president and town mayor for nearly 20 years after stepping down as PM in the 1970s. Raymond Barre started an elected career only after being prime minister (1976–81), becoming a deputy in the National Assembly and later serving as mayor of Lyon 1995–2001. Pierre Mauroy had been mayor of Lille for eight years before becoming socialist prime minister in 1981 and continued to be the city’s mayor for 17 years after he left that national office in 1984. Five years after losing the French presidency Giscard D’Estaing apparently had hopes of becoming prime minister during the first ‘cohabitation’ of the Mitterrand years (1986–88), but lost out to Chirac. The focus of ambition is more usually in the other direction: two French prime ministers went on to become president (Pompidou and Chirac), while another seven PMs were either formal candidates for the presidency or else campaigned or




manoeuvred within their parties in attempts to be put on the slate. The average Fifth Republic prime minister, quitting that office in his mid-fifties, knows that half of the presidents assumed the country’s topmost office in their sixties and served into their mid to late-seventies. Only one former US president has ever been re-elected to that office, Grover Cleveland in 1892, though three others ran again unsuccessfully, including Theodore Roosevelt, who stood on a third-party ticket in 1912, splitting the Republican vote and letting in Woodrow Wilson. A couple more hoped, but failed, to gain their party’s nomination, including Hoover in 1936. The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, prevents anyone from being elected president more than twice, so a come back is not possible for Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. However, after losing the presidency in 1976, Gerald Ford did not rule out a return to top-flight national politics. ‘Anybody who is dumb enough to leave the happy and useful life of an elder statesman is not smart enough to be president’, was one caustic media comment about Ford in 1980. He decided not to fight for the Republican nomination – Ronald Reagan, whom he disliked, was unstoppable. But Ford considered accepting Reagan’s offer of the vice-presidential nomination, only for negotiations to break down over his bid for a virtual ‘co-presidency’ with a greatly expanded vice-presidential role, powers and status.6 In the 19th century a few former US presidents went back into elective politics in a way their modern equivalents do not seem to have considered – they ran for legislative office. John Quincy Adams was elected to the House of Representatives in 1831 and spent 17 years as a congressman, and a leading abolitionist; Andrew Johnson became a US Senator in 1875, but died only months into his term; and John Tyler became a member of the Confederacy’s Provisional Congress and won election to the South’s House of Representatives but died in 1862 before taking his seat there. The way in which former British prime ministers have frequently continued to play a role in public life from the House of Lords has influenced some American supporters of the idea of giving former US presidents a seat in the Senate as ‘senators-for-life’. Versions of this scheme have been put forward since the 19th century. After he left the White House Harry Truman suggested making former presidents non-voting ‘free members of Congress’, able to take part in debates on the floor of the Senate and the House of Representatives and to participate in congressional committees. Other ideas have been floated: making former presidents members of a ‘consultative council of state’ to advise and assist the incumbent president, or to create a ‘national council … a House of Experience’, with former presidents, former chief justices and former House of Representatives speakers – a forum where big, long-term issues could be discussed by people who are no longer seeking votes. Presidents John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush expressed scepticism about this sort of innovation. The counter argument is former presidents have plenty of other ways of publicly airing their views and that if the incumbent



230 After Number 10

wants to tap the experience, advice and judgement of a predecessor it is usually best done on a personal, informal and private basis. The US Senate in 1963 amended its rules to allow former presidents to address that body ‘upon formal written notice to the presiding officer’ but, so far, none has made a formal address.7 On the other side of the Atlantic a proposal to appoint former French presidents as senators-for-life was soon sunk when critics pointed out it would grant Jacques Chirac permanent parliamentary immunity from the corruption scandals dogging his Paris mayoralty. Giscard D’Estaing stayed out of politics for several years after he lost the presidency in 1981, but then came back at the regional level and won a seat in the National Assembly. Many former French prime ministers stay in politics as deputies or senators – some for a long time. Couve de Murville was a deputy and then a senator for over 25 years after his one-year term as prime minister; Pierre Messmer stayed on in parliament for 14 years and Raymond Barre was a deputy for 20 years after leaving the PM’s office. Fabius was twice chairman of the National Assembly after he resigned as prime minister; Édouard Balladur presided over its foreign affairs commission. In Germany, although Schroder resigned his seat in the Bundestag on leaving office as chancellor, his predecessors stayed in parliament: Kohl and Schmidt for four years, Kiesinger for 11 years, while Brandt remained head of his party, the SPD, for 13 years after he resigned as chancellor, and kept his seat in the Bundestag. Some outgoing leaders do not have the chance to stay in parliament – their governments not only go down to election defeat but they lose their own seats, as did Kim Campbell in Canada in 1993 (her party reduced to only two seats in a massive landslide defeat) and John Howard in Australia in 2007. Balfour was the last British PM to suffer this experience in 1906. Three recent Australian PMs resigned from parliament more or less immediately after losing office: Malcolm Fraser in 1983, Bob Hawke in 1991 (after being ousted in a party coup) and Paul Keating in 1996; in recent decades McMahon was unusual in staying on as a backbencher for ten years after he lost the premiership. In Canada Diefenbaker was something of an outlying case, serving for four years as leader of the opposition after his government lost the 1963 election, and then remaining in parliament for 12 more years, well into his eighties, after he was overthrown in a party leadership convention. Rejected or forced out at home, some former government leaders in European states find another berth in Brussels – becoming active in politics at the EU level. Those elected as MEPs at various times include, from France, Giscard D’Estaing and Michel Rocard; ex-German chancellor Willy Brandt; former Italian PMs Emilio Colombo (who was president of the European parliament 1977–79) and Giovanni Goria; former Belgian PMs Jean-Luc Dehaene, Wilfried Martens and Leo Tindemens; and former Danish PMs Rasmussen and Schlüter. Former French prime minister, Edith Cresson, removed by Mitterrand after only a year in office in 1992, went on to serve as an EU




commissioner 1995–99 and was a central figure in the corruption and incompetence scandals that brought down the Santer commission. Santer himself was the second former prime minister of Luxembourg to be head of the European commission, following in the footsteps of Gaston Thorn (and after he resigned as president of the commission, Santer became an MEP from 1999 to 2004). Romano Prodi was EU commission president 1999–2004 after being Italian PM 1996–98, later plunging back into Italian politics and becoming prime minister again 2006–08. José Manuel Barroso, who had been Portuguese PM from 2002 to 2004, succeeded him. A couple of former prime ministers have, at one time or another, been appointed as EU ambassadors: Dries van Agt (Dutch PM 1977–82) was the European community’s ambassador to Japan and then to the USA between 1989 and 1995, while John Bruton (Irish PM 1994–97) became EU ambassador to the USA in 2004. Former Swedish prime minister, Carl Bildt wore several different caps during his time as a mediator in the Balkans in the 1990s, including being the EU’s special envoy to the former Yugoslavia. He was also at different times co-chairman of the Drayton peace conference, High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the UN secretary general’s special envoy for the Balkans. A strong supporter of the idea of a United States of Europe, Giscard D’Estaing presided over the Convention on the Future of Europe 2001–03, drafting the EU constitution rejected by voters in his native France in the 2005 referendum. Three former PMs from different countries were closely involved in that Convention’s work: John Bruton, Giuliano Amato and Jean-Luc Dehaene. In 2007 Felipe González of Spain (prime minister 1982–96) was put in charge of a special high-level group to write a report on the future of Europe and the challenges the EU will face from 2020 to 2030. As with Tony Blair’s Middle East envoy role, global diplomacy has offered opportunities for some former leaders. Bill Clinton claimed his post-presidential ‘dream job’ was secretary-general of the United Nations, though he admitted it was not a realistic prospect. Jimmy Carter once said he would have taken that job if offered it.8 Former Danish prime minister Poul Hartling was the UN high commissioner for refugees 1978–85, with former Dutch PM Ruud Lubbers later holding that post 2001–05. Gough Whitlam served for three years as Australian ambassador to UNESCO in the 1980s. Joe Clark served as the UN secretary-general’s special representative for Cyprus in 1993–96. Gro Harlem Brundtland, former prime minister of Norway, ran the World Health Organisation 1998–2003 and is now the UN secretary-general’s special envoy on climate change. In retirement former Australian PM Malcolm Fraser was active in international efforts to end apartheid and secure reform in South Africa, chairing various UN and Commonwealth ‘eminent persons’ panels and high-level groups.



232 After Number 10


Former presidents, argued Harry Truman, should not ‘use their special experience for private and personal gain’ or permit themselves to be ‘used by any private interests’ because of the office they had held. When he left the White House in 1953, Truman’s only income initially came from an army pension of $1,300 a year – he rejected several big-money offers of business appointments but eventually received $600,000 for writing his memoirs. In 1969 de Gaulle took himself off to Colombey-les-Deux-Église to write his memoirs and brood on ‘France’s slide into mediocrity’, turning down the pensions he was entitled to as a former president and retired general, and living modestly on a colonel’s pension.9 Many of today’s former leaders, in contrast, seem only too willing to ‘cash in’ on their status as an ex-prime minister or ex-president, in addition to enjoying substantial official support and retirement ‘perks’. In the USA pensions and other support, for staff, travel, office-rental, telephones and postage, were introduced in the 1958 Former Presidents Act – the $25,000 per year pension of 1958 growing to $191,000 by 2008. The total annual pensions and expenses bill for the three living current former presidents in 2008 is $2.5 million. The Presidential Transition Act of 1963 provides ex-presidents with funds to cover expenses in the first six months out of office. Clinton received $1.8 million for the 2001 transition. On top of all this is the bill for secret-service protection for former presidents and their spouses, introduced only after the 1963 Kennedy assassination and estimated as running to $24 million a year in 2000. Nixon gave up his secret-service protection in 1985 but Ford’s bodyguards, shadowing him round some of the lushest golf courses in the US, used to boast of having the best jobs in government. The US taxpayer also funds the maintenance and operating costs of the presidential libraries built by every former president since Hoover to house their papers and serve as museum, monument and shrine, though the former presidents themselves have to take on the heavy burden of raising privately the large sums of money needed to build these institutions.10 Though some are sceptical about what former top politicians can bring to the boardroom, their contacts, name-recognition, presentational and networking skills, and ability to open doors with foreign governments are valuable assets, as many ex-leaders around the world have found. Bob Hawke, the former Labor prime minister in Australia became wealthy – possibly worth $50 million – reportedly through the property market and business deals in China. Former Spanish PM Aznar joined Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation media conglomerate. Many former leaders can quietly make their money in this sort of way. Sometimes there are controversies, as over the links of both Carl Bildt, former Swedish PM and, more recently, former German chancellor Schroder with the Russian energy company



Money matters

Gazprom, and sometimes there are odd surprises, as when Mikhail Gorbachev appeared in a Pizza Hut commercial and in adverts for Louis Vuitton’s luxury luggage (to raise money for his foundation), or when Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger appeared in the American TV soap opera ‘Dynasty’. In contrast with Truman, former US presidents are nowadays millionaires. Money was never a problem for Lyndon Johnson, then the richest ex-president in American history, owner of TV stations, banks, property and ranches worth $15–20 million. Gerald Ford was described as the first person ‘to make a job – a very lucrative one – out of being a former president’, raking in large sums through speaking engagements (the socalled ‘mashed potato circuit’) and from sitting on corporate boards, soon earning over a $1 million a year from these activities. Ronald Reagan banked $2 million from an eight-day speaking tour of Japan. Bill Clinton’s earnings have been enormous. He can easily make more from just one speech than his annual presidential pension. He is reported as having earned a total of nearly $40 million on the international lecture circuit since leaving office in 2001. The Clintons left the White House with an estimated $12 million legal debts, but by 2007 were worth somewhere between $10 and $50 million, according to Hillary Clinton’s Senate disclosure forms.11

Putting pen to paper Former presidents and prime ministers ‘sell their lives dearly’, as Roy Jenkins once put it. Bill Clinton, who is reported as having a $12 million advance for his memoirs, holds the record. Clinton’s My Life, published in 2004, went on to sell a record 400,000 on its first day and a million copies in the first week.12 However, one suspects that more copies of former leaders’ memoirs are sold than read. Although one former president, Ulysses S. Grant, in 1885 wrote memoirs which are an acknowledged literary masterpiece, the ex-leader’s anxiety about his or her ‘legacy’ and the aims of detailed historical self-justification, settling of scores and making of money often combine to produce something weighty, stilted and tedious. ‘Good God, what crap!’, wrote Harry Truman after reading the manuscript of his memoirs. Clinton’s memoirs run to 957 pages and were described in a devastating New York Times review as ‘sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull’.13 Some former leaders range more widely. Books on foreign policy and broader world problems are a favourite genre – as seen in Paul Keating’s book Engagement: Australia Faces the Asia-Pacific (2000), George H.W. Bush’s book (co-authored with Brent Scowcroft), A World Transformed (1998), and various publications by Helmut Schmidt. Thatcher’s (2002) book Statecraft is of this type. As part of his careful campaign to rehabilitate his reputation in the eyes of history, Richard Nixon published ten books, largely about foreign policy and global issues. Jimmy Carter has been the most prolific



234 After Number 10


Health and age factors Longevity and good health are essential ingredients for a successful postpresidency or post-premiership. ‘I outlived the bastards’, the long-lived Herbert Hoover is supposed to have said of his political critics and foes. Leaving office at 58, Hoover lived to the age of 90 and had the longest postpresidency in American history, of over 31 years, for the first third of which, when FDR was in the White House, he was almost an ‘unperson’, but he was then able to play a useful, non-partisan public service role.14 Gerald Ford, who died aged 93 in 2006, had the second-longest post presidency: 29 years and 11 months. ‘There is nothing left … but to get drunk’, moaned one particularly depressed 19th century ex-US president – and there have been similar cases since in other countries. Deprivation of power, status, public attention and high-octane political activity – combined with general ageing effects – can make ‘letting go’ and retirement difficult, even traumatic. Lyndon Johnson was only 60 when he swopped the presidency for a lonely and bitter exile in Texas, where he went into a pretty steep decline and died, exhausted and depressed, only four years later.15 The average age at which postwar British prime ministers left that office was 63; excluding the assassinated John F. Kennedy, postwar US presidents left the White House at an average age of 64; German chancellors left office at an average age of 68, French Fifth Republic prime ministers at 56, and French presidents at average age 70. There are large variations in the figures. In all countries former leaders who leave office in their forties or just under – such as Laurent Fabius (39), Joe Clark (40), Carl Bildt (45) Kim Cambell (46), Jenny Shipley (47) – are in a different position from those stepping down or forced out in their late-sixties, seventies or older – such as Adenauer (87), Churchill (80), de Gaulle (79), Reagan (78), Chirac (75), Mackenzie King (74), Menzies (72), Eisenhower (70), George H. W. Bush (69) or Kohl (68). The 40-something ex-prime minister has plenty of time in which to try to rebuild a political or public position, or to start a wholly new career in a different field. Those in their fifties are usually still full of beans, too. Bill Clinton (54) was the youngest former US president since Theodore Roosevelt, who became an ex-president at age 50 in 1909. Jimmy Carter left the presidency



former president, writing over 20 books, including memoirs, policy books (including a controversial book on the Middle East), a self-help book, poetry, a children’s book and the first novel to be written by a former US president (a not-very-good one, about the American revolutionary war in the South). Giscard D’Estaing also wrote a novel of dubious quality, panned by the critics. Neither Carter nor Giscard measure up against Disraeli. Vaclav Havel, the former Czech president, has written a play called ‘Leaving’ about a politician’s painful adjustment to a new life after relinquishing office.

236 After Number 10

aged 56 – at the same age Ronald Reagan was still nearly 14 years off entering the White House. ‘The younger [former leaders] are, the more opportunities they are likely to seize. They have more energy. They need more money for the years ahead. They often have more to prove. They have more time in which to carry out their plans.’16

Over the last two decades, some former leaders have carved out a new sort of role, involving public service and public-policy advocacy and activism, together with the creation of an eponymous institutional base to support and further these activities on an international level. Jimmy Carter was the trailblazer, in some eyes redefining the ex-presidency and extending its scope and potential.17 Bill Clinton has explicitly cited Carter as the model for his own post-presidential path. Carter is often described as one of the best, if not the greatest of US ex-presidents, a status underlined by his winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Widely seen (but not by himself) as having been a failure as president, loathed by the Reaganites in the 1980s and with his own party keeping its distance, his self-reinvention as a global peacemaker gave him a new sense of purpose, and brought political resurrection and public acclaim, including higher poll ratings than he had enjoyed when in the White House. However, his post-presidential role has been more ambiguous than it appears at first glance. The image of the ex-president ‘citizen Carter’, wearing a hard-hat and wielding a hammer, working, along with his wife, to build houses for the poor with the Christian organisation Habitat for Humanity is well-known. His wider activities come under the umbrella of the Carter Center, based in Florida, launched in the 1980s as a non-profit organisation. It has a staff of 150, an annual budget of $35 million and has worked in over 60 countries around the world, promoting peace, democracy and human rights, monitoring elections, mediating in conflicts, and tackling poverty and disease in developing nations. Carter sees the Center as continuing the unfinished business of his presidency and has played an active and hands-on role in its work. Carter’s strong religious faith, boundless energy, integrity and idealism are all to the fore in this humanitarian work. In less positive terms, critics have also seen naivety, egoism and selfrighteousness. Carter was an outsider and a maverick as president, and remained so as an ex-president. His successors in the White House have frequently been wary about his ‘freelance’ diplomacy, grandstanding and ‘unconscionable glory-hogging on CNN’. He appalled the first Bush administration by privately writing to world leaders in the 1990–91 Gulf War, urging them not to back the US-led response to Saddam’s occupation of Kuwait. He was seen by the White House as a former president treacherously trying to sabotage US government policy on the eve of a war. Carter then antagonised and annoyed



Institutionalising the ex-leader’s role?

Clinton and his administration with his activities in North Korea, Haiti and Bosnia, and on other issues, in the 1990s. More recently he described the foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration as ‘the worst in history’. The danger is that an activist ex-president pursuing a strong personal agenda may at times seem like a loose-cannon, meddling in or blurring the foreign policy pursued by the incumbent leader and government.18 By setting up foundations, other former leaders ‘have sought to capitalise on their prestige and personal contacts … [aiming to continue their presidency or premiership] by other means, with less power, but without the boring bits, the same level of scrutiny or the opposition and other constraints that handicapped them in office’. Gorbachev and Yeltsin established foundations after leaving power, as did Nelson Mandela and Jacques Chirac. Clinton has a foundation and launched in 2005 the Clinton Global Initiative. Tony Blair was influenced by Clinton’s record. Both Mandela and Clinton have been able to exploit their global celebrity status to raise large amounts of money to campaign about, raise awareness of, and help to address pressing world problems like AIDS, education, poverty, democratic development and environmental issues. Mandela has also been active as a peace-maker and conflict-mediator in Africa.19 There are now collective organisations of former world leaders. Ex-US President Gerald Ford used to host annual meetings of the ‘Vail Group’, which included ex-Chancellor of Germany Helmut Schmidt, ex-British PM James Callaghan and ex-French President Giscard D’Estaing, to discuss international issues. In 1983 Schmidt helped to found the InterAction Council with over 30 former heads of state and heads of government. A notable product of this grouping was the idea of a ‘Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities’ to counterbalance the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Club of Madrid, founded in 2001, has an even larger membership of former leaders and is focused particularly on promoting democracy; in addition to its public programme of meetings, conferences and reports it offers confidential ‘peer-to-peer advice and counselling to current leaders struggling to build or consolidate democracy’. In 2007 another group called ‘The Elders’ was formed, aiming to address world problems, and including Mandela, ex-UN secretary general Kofi Anan, Jimmy Carter and ex-Irish president Mary Robinson among its members.20 Sceptics argue this model of ‘all-star teams’ of ‘hipster statesmen’ cannot work for all policy problems, that politicians in office can make more happen, and that calling attention to a problem is not the same as solving it.21 This observation might be true in general but may underestimate the impact and leverage of these groups/ networks and activities in particular cases. For those former leaders who do not want to retire or move completely into private or business life, they offer a new role and an institutionalised and globalised way of using their talents and experience.




Notes

1 ‘How to be Ex-Prime Minister’, BBC2, 17 July 2007 [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ uk_politics/6233470.stm]. 2 Peter D. Just, ‘United Kingdom: Life after Number 10 – Premiers Emeritus and Parliament’, Journal of Legislative Studies, vol. 10, no. 2/3, 2004, pp.66–78. 3 A.J.P. Taylor, British Prime Ministers and Other Essays (London: Penguin, 1999), p.13. 4 Philip Williamson and Edward Baldwin (eds), Baldwin Papers: A Conservative Statesman 1908–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p.475; Henry Taylor, The Statesman (New York: New American Library, 1958 [first published 1836]), p.154. 5 Terry Coleman, Movers and Shakers (London: Andre Deutsch, 1987), p.117; John Sergeant, Maggie: Her Fatal Legacy (London: Macmillan, 2005), pp.186, 202. 6 David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (London: Jonathan Cape, 1977), p.696; David Carlton, Anthony Eden (London: Allen and Unwin, 1981), p.469. 7 The Guardian, 26 May 2007; Alistair Horne, Macmillan 1957–1986: Volume II of the Official Biography (London: Macmillan, 1989), p.567. 8 Roy Jenkins, The Chancellors (London: Macmillan, 1998), p.187. 9 The Times, 2 August 1976; D.R. Thorpe, Alec Douglas-Home (London: SinclairStevenson, 1996), p.404. 10 Anthony Trollope, The Prime Minister (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 1999), vol. II, pp.305, 350, 359, 362; Anthony Trollope, The Duke’s Children (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 1999), p.622. 11 Philip Ziegler, Addington (London: Collins, 1965), p.260. 12 James Margach, The Anatomy of Power (London: W.H. Allen, 1979), p.34; The Guardian, 7 June 2006; Williamson and Baldwin (eds), Baldwin Papers, p.475; The Times, 23 June 2007. 13 H. Montgomery Hyde, Neville Chamberlain (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976), p.86; The Observer, 3 December 1978. 14 Roy Jenkins, Gladstone (London: Macmillan, 1995), p.190. 15 Robert Stewart, The Penguin Dictionary of Political Quotations (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), p.13; Robert Rhodes James, The British Revolution: British Politics 1880–1939 (London: Methuen, 1978), p.474; The Guardian, 8 February 2007; Keith Kyle, Suez (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003), p.508. 16 Trevor Lloyd, ‘Thatcher and Her Ministers’, Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, vol. 26, no. 4, 1994, p.645; The Observer, 4 October 1998; The Times, 8 October 1998. 17 H.C.G. Matthew, Gladstone 1875–1898 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p.369. 18 Select Committee on the Remuneration of Ministers, HC 241 (1920), qs.145, 169–70, 193–202; Select Committee on Ministers’ Remuneration, HC 170 (1930), qs.177, 319–20, 324–9; The Times, 1 February 1924; House of Commons debates, 12 April 1937, col. 650. 238



Chapter 1

19 Review Body on Top Salaries, Report no. 64, Review of Parliamentary Pay, Pensions and Allowances 2007, vol. 1 – Report, Cm 7270-1, pp.32–3, 39, 40; House of Commons debates, 16 January 2008, col. 34WS. 20 The National Archives, PRO, PREM 16/109; House of Commons debates, 12 March 1974, col. 86. 21 Daily Telegraph, 6 October 2009; Tony Benn, More Time for Politics: Diaries 2001–2007 (London: Hutchinson, 2007), p.50; The Times, 11 September 2009; information from the Metropolitan Police (FoI request 2006060003055); BBC ‘Open Secrets’ blog: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/2006/05/callaghan_ left_unprotected.html; http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/2006/06/post_3. html 22 The Times, 26 April 2007; The Guardian, 11 January 2008.

Chapter 2 1 A term used by his 18th century biographer, William Coxe, in his Memoirs of the Life and Administration of Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1816 [first published 1797]), vol. 4, pp.300, 322, 323. 2 Coxe, Sir Robert Walpole, vol. 4, pp.258, 324–5; Jeremy Black, Walpole in Power (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2001), p.177; Jonathan Oates, ‘Sir Robert Walpole after His Fall from Power, 1742–1745’, History, vol. 91, issue 302, 2006, p.221. 3 Black, Walpole in Power, pp.174–5; John W. Wilkes, A Whig in Power: The Political Career of Henry Pelham (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1964), pp.21, 24; H.T. Dickinson, Walpole and the Whig Supremacy (London: The English Universities Press, 1973), p.189. 4 Black, Walpole in Power, pp.176–7; Oates, ‘Sir Robert Walpole after His Fall from Power’, pp.221, 222; Wilkes, A Whig in Power, p.27. 5 Oates, ‘Sir Robert Walpole after His Fall from Power’, p.229; Brian W. Hill, Sir Robert Walpole (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1989), pp.214–16; Wilkes, A Whig in Power, p.29. 6 Black, Walpole in Power, p.178; Coxe, Sir Robert Walpole, vol. 4, pp.329–38; Stephen Taylor, ‘Walpole, Robert, First Earl of Orford (1676–1745)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004, online edn, Jan 2008 [www.oxforddnb.com]. 7 Coxe, Sir Robert Walpole, vol. 4, pp.375–8; Chris Boxall, Bob of Lynn: The First Prime Minister: A History of Sir Robert Walpole and Houghton Hall (King’s Lynn: King’s Lynn Press, 2007), p.32; Edward Pearce, The Great Man: Sir Robert Walpole: Scoundrel, Genius and Britain’s First Prime Minister (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007), p.423. 8 A.J.P. Taylor, British Prime Ministers and Other Essays (London: Penguin, 1999), pp.13–14; Pearce, The Great Man, p.419; Plumb quoted in Oates, ‘Sir Robert Walpole after His Fall from Power’, p.229. 9 Edmund A. Spriggs, ‘The Illnesses and Death of Robert Walpole’, Medical History, vol. 26, 1982, pp.421–8; Arthur J. Viseltear, ‘The Last Illness of Sir Robert Walpole, First Earl of Orford’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 41, no. 3, 1967, pp.195–207. 10 Coxe, Sir Robert Walpole, vol. 4, p.376. 11 Aubrey Newman, ‘Henry Pelham’, in Herbert Van Thal (ed.), The Prime Ministers, vol. 1: Sir Robert Walpole to Sir Robert Peel (London: Allen and Unwin, 1974), p.64;



Notes 239

12

13

14

15

16 17

18 19 20

21 22

23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Dermot Englefield, Janet Seaton and Isobel White, Facts About the British Prime Ministers (London: Mansell, 1995), p.410. John Wilkes, A Whig in Power: The Political Career of Henry Pelham (New York: Northwestern University Press, 1964), pp.212, 214–15; P.J. Kulisheck, ‘Pelham, Henry (1694–1754)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004, online edn, Jan 2008 [www.oxforddnb.com]. Philip Lawson, ‘William Cavendish, Fourth Duke of Devonshire’, in Robert Eccleshall and Graham Walker (eds), Biographical Dictionary of British Prime Ministers (London: Routledge, 1998), p.35. Peter D. Brown and Karl W. Schweizer (eds), The Devonshire Diary: William Cavendish, Fourth Duke of Devonshire: Memoranda on State Affairs 1759–1762 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1982), p.8. Karl W. Schweizer, ‘Cavendish, William, Fourth Duke of Devonshire (bap. 1720, d. 1764)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004, online edn, Jan 2008 [www.oxforddnb.com]; G.M.D. Howat, ‘The Duke of Devonshire’, in Van Thal (ed.), The Prime Ministers, vol. 1, Sir Robert Walpole to Sir Robert Peel, p.99. Reed Browning, The Duke of Newcastle (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975), p.291. Reed Browning, ‘Holles, Thomas Pelham-, Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne and First Duke of Newcastle under Lyme (1693–1768)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004, online edn, Jan 2008 [www. oxforddnb.com]; Browning, The Duke of Newcastle, pp.322–3. Browning, The Duke of Newcastle, pp.306–16. Browning, The Duke of Newcastle, pp.322–7, 330–3. Browning, The Duke of Newcastle, pp.325–7; Browning in ODNB; Ray A. Kelch, Newcastle: A Duke Without Money – Thomas Pelham-Holles 1693–1768 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974). Kelch, Newcastle: A Duke Without Money, p.185; Browning, The Duke of Newcastle, pp.331, 334. John Brewer, ‘The Misfortunes of Lord Bute: A Case-Study of Eighteenth Century Political Argument and Public Opinion’, Historical Journal, vol. 16, no. 1, 1973, pp.3–43. Karl W. Schweizer, ‘Introduction: Lord Bute Interpreted in History’, in Karl W. Schweizer (ed.), Lord Bute: Essays in Re-interpretation (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1988), pp.6, 10; Alice M. Coats, Lord Bute: An Illustrated Life of John Stuart, Third Earl of Bute 1713–1792 (Aylesbury: Shire Publications, 1975), pp.33, 35, 42. Peter D. Brown, ‘Bute in Retirement’, in Schweizer (ed.), Lord Bute: Essays in Re-interpretation, p.241. Frank O’Gorman, ‘The Myth of Lord Bute’s Secret Influence’, in Schweizer (ed.), Lord Bute: Essays in Re-interpretation, pp.57–81. O’Gorman, ‘The Myth of Lord Bute’s Secret Influence’, p.66. Brown, ‘Bute in Retirement’, p.259. The Times, 13 March 1792. Philip Lawson, George Grenville: A Political Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp.v–vi. J.V. Beckett, ‘George Grenville, Prime Minister 1763–1765: Career Politician or Country Gentleman?’, Parliamentary History, vol. 14, no. 2, 1995, pp.139–48; John Beckett, The Rise and Fall of the Grenvilles: Dukes of Buckingham and Chandos 1710 to 1921 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), pp.84–5; Lawson,



240 Notes

31 32 33 34 35

36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43 44

45 46

47 48 49 50 51 52 53

54

George Grenville, p.154; J.V. Beckett and Peter D.G. Thomas, ‘Grenville, George (1712–1770)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004, online edn Jan 2008 [www.oxforddnb.com]. Lawson, George Grenville, pp.2, 219, 241–2, 246; Beckett and Thomas in ODNB. Lawson, George Grenville, pp.vi, 224, 226. Marie Peters, The Elder Pitt (London: Longman, 1998), pp.224–6; William Hague, William Pitt the Younger (London: HarperCollins, 2004), pp.xxi–xxiv. Jeremy Black, Pitt the Elder (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p.274; Peters, The Elder Pitt, pp.182–3, 189. Peters, The Elder Pitt, pp.2, 190, 209; Karl W. Schweizer, review of Jeremy Black, Pitt the Elder, in Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, vol. 25, no. 4, 1993, p.712. Peters, The Elder Pitt, pp.10–11, 210, 221. Peters, The Elder Pitt, pp.210–13; William Stanhope Taylor and John Henry Pringle (eds), Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (London: John Murray, 1840), vol. 4, p.197, n.1. Peters, The Elder Pitt, pp.187–97, 209; Black, Pitt the Elder, pp.276–87. Peters, The Elder Pitt, pp.222–5; Black, Pitt the Elder, pp.29, 297–8. Sir William Anson (ed.), Autobiography and Political Correspondence of Augustus Henry, Third Duke of Grafton KG (London: John Murray, 1898), p.234. Peter Durrant, ‘The Duke of Grafton’, in Van Thal (ed.), The Prime Ministers, vol. 1, Sir Robert Walpole to Sir Robert Peel, pp.157–8, 159. Anson (ed.), Autobiography, pp.viii, xxi. Anson (ed.), Autobiography, pp.1–2. Peter Durrant, ‘FitzRoy, Augustus Henry, Third Duke of Grafton (1735–1811)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004, online edn, Oct 2008 [www.oxforddnb.com]; Anson (ed.), Autobiography, pp.xxxv–xxxviii, xl, 258–9, 264. Marjorie Bloy, ‘Duke of Grafton’, in Eccleshall and Walker (eds), Biographical Dictionary of British Prime Ministers, p.63; The Ipswich Journal, 23 March 1811. Peter Whiteley, Lord North: The Prime Minister Who Lost America (London: The Hambledon Press, 1996), pp.201, 204; Peter D.G. Thomas, Lord North (London: Allen Lane, 1976), p.132. Alan Valentine, Lord North (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967), vol. 2, p.320. Whiteley, Lord North, pp.209–11. Valentine, Lord North, vol. 2, pp.350, 358–9; Whiteley, Lord North, pp.215–16. Whiteley, Lord North, p.217. Thomas, Lord North, pp.136, 143–4, 146–7; Whiteley, Lord North, p.219. Valentine, Lord North, vol. 2, p.452. Ross Hoffman, The Marquis: A Study of Lord Rockingham, 1730–1782 (New York: Fordham University Press, 1973); Stephen Farrell, ‘The Practices and Purposes of Party Leadership: Rockingham and the Lords, 1765–82’, Parliamentary History, vol. 22, no. 1, 2003, pp.13–28; Marjorie Bloy, ‘In Spite of Medical Help: The Puzzle of an Eighteenth-Century Prime Minister’s Illness’, Medical Hisory, vol. 34, no. 2, 1990, pp.178–84; S. M. Farrell, ‘Wentworth, Charles Watson-, Second Marquess of Rockingham (1730–1782)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Sept 2004, online edn, Jan 2008 [www.oxforddnb.com]. Harold Wilson, A Prime Minister on Prime Ministers (London: Michael Joseph, 1977), p.15.



Notes 241

55 Charles Stuart, ‘Lord Shelburne’, in Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Valerie Pearl and Blair Worden (eds), History and Imagination: Essays in Honour of H.R. Trevor Roper (London: Duckworth, 1981), pp.243–53; John Cannon, ‘Petty, William, Second Earl of Shelburne and First Marquess of Lansdowne (1737–1805)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Sept 2004, online edn, Jan 2008 [www.oxforddnb.com]; John Norris, Shelburne and Reform (London: Macmillan, 1963), p.275. 56 Norris, Shelburne and Reform, p.274. 57 Cannon in ODNB; Hague, William Pitt the Younger, pp.153–4; Norris, Shelburne and Reform, p.275. 58 Norris, Shelburne and Reform, pp.276–7; Cannon in ODNB. 59 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), p.93. 60 Stuart, ‘Lord Shelburne’, pp.249–50; Norris, Shelburne and Reform, p.6. 61 Cannon in ODNB; Roger Ellis and Geoffrey Treasure, Britain’s Prime Ministers (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 2005), p.65.

Chapter 3 1 Philip Ziegler, Addington (London: Collins, 1965), pp.380–1; James Bieri, Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Biography: Youth’s Unextinguished Fire 1792–1816 (Newark DE: University of Delaware Press, 2004), p.256. 2 J.E. Cookson, ‘Addington, Henry, First Viscount Sidmouth (1757–1844)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004, online edn, Jan 2008 [www.oxford dnb.com]. 3 Ziegler, Addington, p.178. 4 Ibid., pp.218–19. 5 Ibid., p.227; R.G. Thorne, ‘Henry Addington’, in R.G. Thorne (ed.), The History of Parliament: The Commons 1790–1820 (London: Secker and Warburg, 1986), vol. 3, p.45. 6 Ziegler, Addington, p.241. 7 Ibid., pp.241, 248–9. 8 Ibid., p.274. 9 Ibid., p.415. 10 Ibid., pp.417–18. 11 William Hague, William Pitt the Younger (London: HarperCollins, 2004), pp.582–3. 12 Ibid., p.491. 13 John Ehrman, The Younger Pitt: The Consuming Struggle (London: Constable, 1996), p.81; Hague, William Pitt the Younger, pp.307–8, 343, 576–7; Michael J. Turner, Pitt the Younger (London: Hambledon and London, 2003), p.272. 14 James Sack, ‘William Wyndham Grenville, First Baron Grenville’, in Robert Eccleshall and Graham Walker (eds), Biographical Dictionary of British Prime Ministers (London: Routledge, 1998), pp.100–1. 15 Michael W. McCahill, ‘William, First Lord Grenville’, Parliamentary History, vol. 22, no. 1, 2003, pp.31, 37–8. 16 Peter Jupp, Lord Grenville (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), pp.409–10. 17 Ibid., pp.413–20. 18 Ibid., pp.430–7. 19 Ibid., pp.437–49.



242 Notes

20 21 22 23

24

25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32

33 34

35

36

37 38

39 40

Ibid., pp.452–9. Ibid., pp.106–16, 294–6, 301, 460–1; The Times, 29 February 2008. Jupp, Lord Grenville, pp.461–3. David Wilkinson, The Duke of Portland: Politics and Party in the Age of George III (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp.29, 163–5; E.A. Smith, ‘The Duke of Portland’, in Herbert Van Thal (ed.), The Prime Ministers, Volume One, Sir Robert Walpole to Sir Robert Peel (London: Allen and Unwin, 1974), p.208. Denis Gray, Spencer Perceval: The Evangelical Prime Minister 1962–1812 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1963); David C. Hanrahan, The Assassination of the Prime Minister: John Bellingham and the Murder of Spencer Perceval (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2008); P.J. Jupp, ‘Perceval, Spencer (1762–1812)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004, online edn, Jan 2008 [www.oxforddnb.com]. Norman Gash, Lord Liverpool (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984), p.2. Charles Petrie, Lord Liverpool and His Times (London: James Barrie, 1954), p.278. Gash, Lord Liverpool, pp.192, 226, 228. Ibid., p.227; Norman Gash, ‘Lord Liverpool’, in Herbert Van Thal (ed.), The Prime Ministers, vol. One, Sir Robert Walpole to Sir Robert Peel (London: Allen and Unwin, 1974), p.296. Louis J. Jennings (ed.), The Croker Papers (London: John Murray, 1884), vol. 1, p.362. Gash, Lord Liverpool, p.250. Gash, ‘Lord Liverpool’, in Van Thal, pp.296–7; Robert Blake, The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill (London: Fontana, 1972), pp.7–8, 37–8, 69. Wendy Hinde, George Canning (London: Collins, 1973); P.J.V. Rolo, George Canning: Three Biographical Studies (London: Macmillan, 1965); Derek Beales, ‘Canning, George (1770–1827)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004, online edn, Jan 2008 [www.oxforddnb.com]. Dick Leonard, Nineteenth-Century British Prime Ministers (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp.124, 126–7, 129. P.J. Jupp, ‘Robinson, Frederick John, First Viscount Goderich and First Earl of Ripon (1782–1859)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004, online edn, Jan 2008 [www.oxford dnb.com]: W.D. Jones, ‘Prosperity’ Robinson: The Life of Viscount Goderich 1782–1859 (London: Macmillan, 1967), pp.205–8. Jupp in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Leonard, Nineteenth Century British Prime Ministers, p.131; Jones, ‘Prosperity’ Robinson, pp.211, 213, 274–5; Roger Ellis and Geoffrey Treasure, Britain’s Prime Ministers (London: ShepheardWalwyn, 2005), p.111. Jones, ‘Prosperity’ Robinson, pp.213, 214–15, 228–9; Michael Fry, ‘Viscount Goderich’, in Robert Eccleshall and Graham Walker (eds), Biographical Dictionary of British Prime Ministers (London: Routledge, 1998), p.122. The Personal Papers of Lord Rendel (London: Ernest Benn, 1931), p.119; Jones, ‘Prosperity’ Robinson, pp.241–52. Jones, ‘Prosperity’ Robinson, pp.268, 271–2; Naotaka Kimizuka, ‘Elder Statesmen and British Party Politics: Wellington, Lansdowne and the Ministerial Crises in the 1850s’, Parliamentary History, vol. 17, no. 3, 1998, p.371. Jones, ‘Prosperity’ Robinson, p.273. The Personal Papers of Lord Rendel, p.92.



Notes 243

41 Christopher Hibbert, Wellington: A Personal History (London: HarperCollins, 1998), pp.299–304, 326–7; Elizabeth Longford, Wellington: Pillar of State (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972), p.285; Norman Gash, ‘Wellesley, Arthur, First Duke of Wellington (1769–1852)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004, online edn, Jan 2008 [www.oxforddnb.com]. 42 Neville Thompson, Wellington After Waterloo (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), p.110; Hibbert, Wellington, p.293. 43 Hibbert, Wellington, p.301; Geoffrey Finlayson, ‘Wellington, the Constitution and the March of Reform’, in Norman Gash (ed.), Wellington: Studies in the Military and Political Career of the First Duke of Wellington (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), pp.201, 204; Longford, Wellington, pp.268–9, 272, 278; Thompson, Wellington After Waterloo, pp.111–28. 44 Douglas Hurd, Robert Peel: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007), pp.131, 162–5, 213–14. 45 Lord Rosebery, ‘Sir Robert Peel’, in John Buchan (ed.), Lord Rosebery: Miscellanies Literary and Historical (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1921), vol. I, p.205; Gash in ODNB; F.C. Mather, ‘Achilles or Nestor? The Duke of Wellington in British Politics, 1832–46’, in Norman Gash (ed.), Wellington: Studies in the Military and Political Career of the First Duke of Wellington (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), pp.173–6. 46 Lucille Iremonger, Lord Aberdeen (London: Collins, 1978), p.131; Hibbert, Wellington, p.322; Longford, Wellington, p.307; Thompson, Wellington After Waterloo, p.154. 47 Longford, Wellington, pp.313, 322–3, 324, 327; Thompson Wellington After Waterloo, pp.162, 175; Gash in ODNB. 48 Hibbert, Wellington, pp.359, 368, 388; Longford, Wellington, p.331. 49 Mather, ‘Achilles or Nestor?’, pp.179–80; Thompson, Wellington After Waterloo, pp.200–3, 215–16. 50 Longford, Wellington, pp.360, 365; Finlayson, ‘Wellington, the Constitution and the March of Reform’, p.209; Thompson, Wellington After Waterloo, p.224. 51 Michael Partridge, ‘Wellington and the Defence of the Realm 1819–52’, in Norman Gash (ed.), Wellington: Studies in the Military and Political Career of the First Duke of Wellington (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990). 52 Thompson, Wellington After Waterloo, pp.231–2, 256; Longford, Wellington, p.396. 53 Hibbert, Wellington, pp.382–3. 54 Ibid., p.404. 55 E.A. Smith, Lord Grey 1764–1845 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p.276. 56 Ibid., pp.287–8, 295, 300–1, 303–6; John W. Derry, Charles, Earl Grey: Aristocratic Reformer (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp.213–14. 57 Grey was the 2nd Earl Grey, having inherited his peerage in 1807. He had been dismayed to leave the Commons and had he been able to renounce his peerage back then, he would probably have done so. In 1831 he was made a Knight of the Garter. On his resignation in 1834 he was offered the Order of the Bath or a step-up in the peerage to a Marquessate, but declined both. (Smith, Lord Grey, pp.132, 308.) 58 Smith, Lord Grey, pp.148–50. 59 Ibid., pp.308–9, 310, 315–17, 319. 60 Ibid., pp.309, 312, 315–16, 318, 320. 61 Ibid., p.321.



244 Notes

62 Philip Ziegler, Melbourne (London: Collins, 1976), p.120; David Cecil, Melbourne (London: Constable, 1965), p.211; L.G. Mitchell, Lord Melbourne 1779–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p.161. 63 Ziegler, Melbourne, p.351; Cecil, Melbourne, p.517; Mitchell, Lord Melbourne, pp.252–3. 64 Eric Evans, ‘Lord Melbourne’, in Robert Eccleshall and Graham Walker (eds), Biographical Dictionary of British Prime Ministers (London: Routledge, 1998), p.139. 65 Mitchell, Lord Melbourne, pp.245–9; Ziegler, Melbourne, pp.343–9, 355–6. 66 Ziegler, Melbourne, pp.353–5, 357; Mitchell, Lord Melbourne, pp.248, 260–4. 67 Cecil, Melbourne, p.528; Zielger, Melbourne, pp.341–2, 350–2; Mitchell, Melbourne, p.264. 68 Ziegler, Melbourne, pp.358–9, 362; Mitchell, Lord Melbourne, pp.263–8. 69 Ziegler, Melbourne, pp.360–1; Mitchell, Lord Melbourne, pp.255–8. 70 Mitchell, Lord Melbourne, p.34.

Chapter 4 1 C.S. Parker (ed.), Sir Robert Peel from His Private Papers (London: John Murray, 1899), vol. 3, pp.472–6. 2 Ibid., p.459; Elizabeth Lee, Wives of the Prime Ministers 1844–1906 (London: Nisbet and Co., 1918), p.53; Norman Gash, Sir Robert Peel: The Life of Sir Robert Peel after 1830 (London: Longman, 1972), pp.163–7, 662–4, 676, 678–82, 686–7. 3 A.A.W. Ramsay, Sir Robert Peel (London: Constable, 1928), p.353; Robert Blake, The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill (London: Fontana/Collins, 1972), p.69. 4 Norman Gash, Aristocracy and People: Britain 1815–1865 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), p.243. 5 Gash, Sir Robert Peel, pp.670–6, 683–6. 6 Donald Read, Peel and the Victorians (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), pp.252–4; Ramsay, Sir Robert Peel, p.353. 7 Ramsay, Sir Robert Peel, p.352; Gash, Sir Robert Peel, pp.595–6, 634. 8 Gash, Sir Robert Peel, pp.623–4, 627–30, 632, 640–3. 9 Gash, Sir Robert Peel, pp.631, 635, 649–51; Gash, Aristocracy and People, p.243; Read, Peel and the Victorians, pp.263–4. 10 Gash, Sir Robert Peel, p.633; Boyd Hilton, ‘Robert Peel’, in Robert Eccleshall and Graham Walker (eds), Biographical Dictionary of British Prime Ministers (London: Routledge, 1998), p.150; Parker, Peel from His Private Papers, vol. 3, p.534. 11 Read, Peel and the Victorians, p.266. 12 Gash, Sir Robert Peel, p.719. 13 Boyd Hilton, ‘Peel: A Reappraisal’, The Historical Journal, vol. 22, no. 3, 1979, p.614. 14 Lord Stanmore, The Earl of Aberdeen (London: Dent, 1905), pp.267–8. 15 Muriel E. Chamberlain, Lord Aberdeen: A Political Biography (London: Longman, 1983), pp.512, 520, 524–6. 16 Lucille Iremonger, Lord Aberdeen (London: Collins, 1978), pp.304, 308; Stanmore, The Earl of Aberdeen, pp.289–90. 17 Chamberlain, Lord Aberdeen, pp.518, 520–2; Iremonger, Lord Aberdeen, pp.308, 317, 320, 322. 18 Asa Briggs, Victorian People (Harmondworth: Penguin, 1965), p.89.



Notes 245

19 Chamberlain, Lord Aberdeen, pp.518–19, 522–3, 526. 20 Iremonger, Lord Aberdeen, pp.318–19; Chamberlain, Lord Aberdeen, pp.523–4; Stanmore, The Earl of Aberdeen, pp.296–8, 301; Roy Jenkins, Gladstone (London: Macmillan, 1995), p.42. 21 Chamberlain, Lord Aberdeen, pp.1–2, 518. 22 Ibid., pp.517, 527–8. 23 Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p.578; David Southgate, The Most English Minister:The Policies and Politics of Palmerston (London: Macmillan, 1966), p.536. 24 Paul Ziegler, Palmerston (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2003), p.128; Southgate, The Most English Minister, pp.540–1. 25 Susan Normington, Lady Caroline Lamb (London: House of Stratus, 2001), p.272. 26 John, Earl Russell, Recollections and Suggestions 1813–1873 (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1875), p.221. 27 Jonathan Parry, ‘Lord John Russell’, in Robert Eccleshall and Graham Walker (eds), Biographical Dictionary of British Prime Ministers (London: Routledge, 1998), p.155; Paul Scherer, Lord John Russell: A Biography (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1999), pp.137–8. 28 J.P. Parry, ‘Past and Future in the Later Career of Lord John Russell’, in T.C.W. Blanning and David Cannadine (eds), History and Biography: Essays in Honour of Derek Beales (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 29 John Prest, Lord John Russell (London: Macmillan, 1972), pp.349–50. 30 Ibid., p.372. 31 Norman Gash, Aristocracy and People: Britain 1815–1865 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), pp.271–2. 32 Scherer, Lord John Russell, pp.331–4; Prest, Lord John Russell, pp.415–18; G.P. Gooch (ed.), The Later Correspondence of Lord John Russell 1840–1878 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1925), vol. 2, p.360. 33 Scherer, Lord John Russell, pp.334–5; Prest, Lord John Russell, pp.418–19; Russell, Recollections and Suggestions, pp.294, 406, 420; Stuart J. Reid, Lord John Russell (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1895), pp.338, 342–4. 34 Prest, Lord John Russell, p.419. 35 Scherer, Lord John Russell, p.154; Bertrand Russell, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (London: Allen and Unwin, 1956), p.110; The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell vol. 1 1872–1914 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1967), pp.19–20. 36 Prest, Lord John Russell, p.420; Scherer, Lord John Russell, p.336. 37 Angus Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister: The 14th Earl of Derby, Volume II: Achievement: 1851–1869 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p.409. 38 Ibid., pp.190, 261–3, 329, 344, 361, 363–4, 392; W.D. Jones, Lord Derby and Victorian Conservatism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1956), pp.270–1. 39 Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister, pp.364–5; Jones, Lord Derby, p.335; Robert Blake, Disraeli (London: Methuen 1966), pp.485–6. 40 Jones, Lord Derby, pp.336–7; Blake, Disraeli, pp.486, 489–90, 494; Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister, pp.366, 367. 41 Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister, pp.376–7. 42 Jones, Lord Derby, pp.338–9. 43 Jones, Lord Derby, pp.337, 345–9; Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister, pp.378–84. 44 Jones, Lord Derby, pp.350–1; Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister, pp.384–6. 45 W.F. Monypenny and G.E. Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (London: John Murray, 1920), vol. 6, pp.523, 540.



246 Notes

46 John Vincent, Disraeli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp.13, 56; Robert Blake, Disraeli (London: Methuen, 1966), pp.521, 565–6. 47 Monypenny and Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, pp.530–1; Blake, Disraeli, p.649; Theo Aronson, Victoria and Disraeli (London: Cassell, 1977), p.184. 48 Monypenny and Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, pp.528, 534, 538, 541–2; Aronson, Victoria and Disraeli, pp.183, 185; Jonathan Parry, Benjamin Disraeli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p.88; Blake, Disraeli, pp.717, 723–4, 730. 49 Monypenny and Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, pp.577–8; Marquis of Zetland (ed.), The Letters of Disraeli to Lady Bradford and Lady Chesterfield (London: Ernest Benn, 1929), vol. 2, pp.271, 272, 281. 50 W.F. Monypenny and G.E. Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (London: John Murray, 1920), vol. 5, pp.169–70; Monypenny and Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, pp.557, 568, 573; William Kuhn, The Politics of Pleasure: A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli (London: The Free Press, 2006), pp.5, 336, 345; Richard Aldous, The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs. Disraeli (London: Hutchinson, 2006), pp.311–12; The Bradenham Edition of the Novels and Tales of Benjamin Disraeli, Vol. XII, Endymion and Falconet (London: Peter Davies, 1927). 51 Monypenny and Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, pp.524, 578, 593–5; Andrew Roberts, Salisbury: Victorian Titan (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999), p.244; Blake, Disraeli, pp.729–30, 731, 732. 52 Blake, Disraeli, pp.726–9; Monypenny and Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, p.593; Edgar Feuchtwanger, Disraeli (London: Arnold, 2000), p.208; Paul Smith, Disraeli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp.208–9. 53 Monypenny and Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, pp.598, 604; Blake, Disraeli, p.747. 54 John Vincent, ‘Benjamin Disraeli’, in Herbert Van Thal (ed.), The Prime Ministers: Volume 2, Lord John Russell to Edward Heath (London: Allen and Unwin, 1975), p.106; Blake, Disraeli, pp.250–1, 253, 421–4, 754. 55 Philip Magnus, Gladstone (London: John Murray, 1954), p.229; Roy Jenkins, Gladstone (London: Macmillan, 1995), p.445. 56 Jenkins, Gladstone, p.372; Magnus, Gladstone, p.124; W.F. Monypenny and G.E. Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (London: John Murray, 1920), vol. 6, p.583; Earl of Oxford and Asquith, Memories and Reflections 1852–1927 (London: Cassell, 1928), vol. I, p.245. 57 Richard Shannon, Gladstone: Heroic Minister 1865–1898 (London: Penguin, 1999), pp.510, 557; H.C.G. Matthew, ‘Gladstone, William Ewart (1809–1898)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004, online edn, May 2008 [www.oxforddnb.com]; Travis L. Crosby, The Two Mr Gladstones (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pp.216–17; Jenkins, Gladstone, pp.585, 586, 591–3. 58 Shannon, Gladstone, pp.550, 556, 559, 562, 567. 59 Jenkins, Gladstone, pp.197, 306, 380, 516, 618; H.C.G. Matthew, Gladstone 1875–1898 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p.356. 60 Jenkins, Gladstone, pp.435, 459, 468, 623; Shannon, Gladstone, pp.562, 565–6, 585–6; Matthew, Gladstone 1875–1898, pp.357–8; Magnus, Gladstone, pp.422–4. 61 J.B. Conacher, ‘A Visit to the Gladstones in 1894’, Victorian Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, 1958, p.159; Shannon, Gladstone, pp.567–8; The Personal Papers of Lord Rendel (London: Ernest Benn, 1931), pp.135–6. 62 Shannon, Gladstone, pp.569, 574. 63 E.J. Feuchtwanger, Gladstone (London: Allen Lane, 1975), p.272; Conacher, ‘A Visit to the Gladstones’, p.159; Asa Briggs (ed.), Gladstone’s Boswell: Late Victorian



Notes 247

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77 78

79 80 81

Conversations by Lionel A. Tollemache (Brighton: Harvester Press 1984), p.100; Shannon, Gladstone, p.569; The Personal Papers of Lord Rendel, p.132. Briggs (ed.), Late Victorian Conversations, pp.166–7; The Personal Papers of Lord Rendel, pp.115, 131, 148, 155–6; Shannon, Gladstone, p.574. Feuchtwanger, Gladstone, p.273; Conacher, ‘A Visit to the Gladstones’, p.160; Magnus, Gladstone, pp.430–1. Jenkins, Gladstone, pp.623–5; Matthew, Gladstone 1875–1898, pp.369–73; Shannon, Gladstone, p.571. Matthew, Gladstone 1875–1898, pp.374–5; Jenkins, Gladstone, pp.625–6. Jenkins, Gladstone, pp.630–1; Shannon, Gladstone, p.589. Leo McKinstry, Rosebery: Statesman in Turmoil (London: John Murray, 2005), pp.348–68. Robert Rhodes James, Rosebery (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1963), pp.384–6; McKinstry, Rosebery, pp.380, 389, 509. Rhodes James, Rosebery, pp.386, 392, 402; H.C.G. Matthew, The Liberal Imperialists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp.23–4. Rhodes James, Rosebery, pp.402, 405, 408–9; McKinstry, Rosebery, pp.412–13. http://www.epsomandewellhistoryexplorer.org.uk/Rosebery.html; The Marquess of Crewe, Lord Rosebery (London: John Murray, 1931), vol. 2, p.617. McKinstry, Rosebery, p.415; Matthew, The Liberal Imperialists, p.70. G.R. Searle, Country Before Party: Coalition and the Idea of National Government in Modern Britain 1885–1987 (Harlow: Longman, 1995), pp.58–63, 269; Matthew, The Liberal Imperialists, pp.11, 146–8; John Wilson, CB: A Life of Sir Henry CampbellBannerman (London: Constable, 1973), pp.371, 387–8. Wilson, CB, pp.374, 376, 378, 385, 392, 393, 424, 433; Matthew, The Liberal Imperialists, p.88; McKinstry, Rosebery, p.415. Matthew, The Liberal Imperialists, pp.97, 110, 111; McKinstry, Rosebery, p.460; Wilson, CB, pp.345–6. Matthew, The Liberal Imperialists, pp.111–12; Rhodes James, Rosebery, p.454; Wilson, CB, pp.434–7; McKinstry, Rosebery, pp.469, 473; David W. Gutzke, ‘Rosebery and Campbell-Bannerman: The Conflict over Leadership Reconsidered’, Historical Research, vol. 54, issue 130, 1981, pp.241–50. Wilson, CB, p.419; Rhodes James, Rosebery, p.486. Rhodes James, Rosebery, pp.465, 469–70; McKinstry, Rosebery, pp.508–9, 513. McKinstry, Rosebery, pp.504, 508–9, 514–15; Rhodes James, Rosebery, p.474.

Chapter 5 1 Andrew Roberts, Salisbury: Victorian Titan (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999), p.769. 2 Ibid., pp.757, 829. 3 Paul Smith, ‘Cecil, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne – Third Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008. 4 Roberts, Salisbury, pp.814–15, 823–4, 829; Dick Leonard, A Century of Premiers: Salisbury to Blair (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp.21–2. 5 A.L. Kennedy, Salisbury 1830–1903: Portrait of a Statesman (London: John Murray, 1953), p.237; Roberts, Salisbury, pp.206, 374, 440–1, 826. 6 Roberts, Salisbury, p.829; Kennedy, Salisbury, p.344. 7 Kennedy, Salisbury, pp.344–5; Roberts, Salisbury, pp.830–1, 847.



248 Notes

8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Roberts, Salisbury, p.819. Ibid., p.829. Ibid., pp.824, 828–31. Blanche E.C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, First Earl of Balfour (London: Hutchinson, 1936), vol. 2, pp.13–14; R.J.Q. Adams, Balfour: The Last Grandee (London: John Murray, 2007), p.228. Adams, Balfour, pp.231–2. Ibid., p.230. Max Egremont, Balfour (London: Collins, 1980), p.213; Adams, Balfour, pp.233, 235. Adams, Balfour, pp.253, 255, 256. Dugdale, Balfour, p.19; Jane Ridley and Clayre Percy (eds), The Letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho 1885–1917 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992), pp.x–xi. Egremont, Balfour, p.259; Adams, Balfour, p.286. Adams, Balfour, p.283. Ibid., p.286. Piers Brendon, Eminent Edwardians (London: Secker & Warburg, 1979), pp.111–12. Ewen Green, Balfour (London: Haus Publishing, 2006), p.91. Egremont, Balfour, p.271. Adams, Balfour, pp.319–20, 322. Winston S. Churchill, Great Contemporaries, cited in: Ruddock F. Mackay, Balfour: Intellectual Statesman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p.303. Lord Riddell, More Pages From My Diary 1908–1914 (London: Country Life, 1934), pp.101–2; Sydney H. Zebel, Balfour: A Political Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p.230; Adams, Balfour, pp.340–1; Dugdale, Balfour, pp.241–2. Dugdale, Balfour, p.235. Egremont, Balfour, p.305; Zebel, Balfour, pp.255, 258; Margaret MacMillan, Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (London: John Murray, 2001), p.157. Mackay, Balfour, p.339. Dugdale, Balfour, p.358; Egremont, Balfour, p.320. Mackay, Balfour, pp.332–3. Egremont, Balfour, pp.323–4. Adams, Balfour, p.364. Egremont, Balfour, p.329; Adams, Balfour, pp.367–8; Zebel, Balfour, p.285; Dugdale, Balfour, p.403. Mackay, Balfour, p.349. Zebel, Balfour, p.288; Adams, Balfour, pp.371–3. Egremont, Balfour, p.312. Adams, Balfour, p.374. Dugdale, Balfour, p.391. Mackay, Balfour, p.354. Dick Leonard, A Century of Premiers: Salisbury to Blair (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2005), p.52. Roy Hattersley, Campbell-Bannerman (London: Haus Publishing, 2006); Jose F. Harris and Cameron Hazlehurst, ‘Campbell-Bannerman’, in John P. Mackintosh (ed.), British Prime Ministers in the Twentieth Century: Volume 1 Balfour to Chamberlain (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977), pp.43–77.



Notes 249

42 J.A. Spender, The Life of the Right Hon. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman GCB (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1923), vol. 2, pp.287–97; John Wilson, CB: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (London: Constable, 1973), pp.515–21. 43 Spender, Campbell-Bannerman, p.381. 44 Stephen Koss, Asquith (London: Allen Lane, 1976), p.214. 45 Roy Jenkins, Asquith (London: Collins, 1978), pp.405–63. 46 Koss, Asquith, p.235. 47 H.C.G. Matthew, ‘Asquith, Herbert Henry, First Earl of Oxford and Asquith (1852–1928)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004, online edition, Jan 2008 [www.oxforddnb.com]; Colin Clifford, The Asquiths (London: John Murray, 2002), pp.386–7; Daphne Bennett, Margot: A Life of the Countess of Oxford and Asquith (London: Victor Gollancz, 1984), pp.289, 295, 311. 48 Jenkins, Asquith, pp.458, 464–5, 467. 49 Koss, Asquith, pp.230, 234; Jenkins, Asquith, pp.466–7, 476–7; Clifford, The Asquiths, p.408. 50 Koss, Asquith, p.241; Jenkins, Asquith, p.481. 51 Koss, Asquith, p.246; Herbert Asquith, Moments of Memory (London: Hutchinson, 1937), pp.358–61. 52 Matthew, ‘Asquith’, Oxford DNB; Koss, Asquith, pp.244, 249–55; Graham Stewart, Friendship & Betrayal: Ambition and the Limits of Loyalty (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007), pp.336–7. 53 Stewart, Friendship & Betrayal, p.338. 54 Jenkins, Asquith, p.517. 55 Select Committee on the Remuneration of Ministers, HC 241 (1920), questions 145, 169–70, 193–202; Bennett, Margot, p.347. 56 Jenkins, Asquith, pp.257, 509. 57 Roy Jenkins, Gallery of 20th Century Portraits (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1988), p.195.

Chapter 6 1 The film, ‘End of an Era for the “Welsh Wizard”’, can be seen on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYeLTdW2b4c 2 Kenneth O. Morgan, Lloyd George (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974), p.155. 3 Ffion Hague, The Pain and the Privilege: The Women Who Loved Lloyd George (London: Harper Perennial, 2009), p.404; John Campbell, If Love Were All … The Story of Frances Stevenson and David Lloyd George (London: Vintage Books, 2007), pp.222, 243, 245; George W. Egerton, ‘The Lloyd George War Memoirs: A Study in the Politics of Memory’, Journal of Modern History, vol. 60, March 1988, pp.59–61. 4 John Campbell, Lloyd George: The Goat in the Wilderness 1922–1931 (London: Cape, 1977), pp.29–30. 5 Richard Toye, Lloyd George and Churchill: Rivals for Greatness (London: Macmillan, 2007), p.100; Colin Cross (ed.), Life With Lloyd George: The Diary of A.J. Sylvester 1931–45 (London: Macmillan, 1975), pp.16–17. 6 Campbell, If Love Were All, p.287; Malcolm Thomson, Lloyd George (London: Hutchinson, 1950), pp.430–1; Cross (ed.), Life With Lloyd George, p.182. 7 Morgan, Lloyd George, pp.178, 207–8; Peter Rowland, Lloyd George (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1975), pp.593, 633; Egerton, ‘The Lloyd George War Memoirs’, pp.61, 79; Cross (ed.), Life With Lloyd George, p.313.



250 Notes

8 Rowland, Lloyd George, p.658. 9 Rowland, Lloyd George, p.591; Morgan, Lloyd George, p.181. 10 Campbell, Lloyd George: The Goat in the Wilderness, pp.9, 177; Charles Loch Mowat, Lloyd George (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), p.55. 11 Rowland, Lloyd George, p.609; Campbell, Lloyd George: The Goat in the Wilderness, p.156. 12 Campbell, Lloyd George: The Goat in the Wilderness, p.99; Rowland, Lloyd George, p.645. 13 Campbell, Lloyd George: The Goat in the Wilderness, p.205. 14 Rowland, Lloyd George, pp.688, 691. 15 Chris Wrigley, Lloyd George (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p.133. 16 Campbell, Lloyd George: The Goat in the Wilderness, p.297; Cross (ed.), Life With Lloyd George, p.70; Rowland, Lloyd George, p.701; Campbell, If Love Were All, pp.425–6. 17 Egerton, ‘The Lloyd George War Memoirs’; Rowland, Lloyd George, pp.700, 746; Thomson, Lloyd George, pp.412–13, 437; Keith Grieves, ‘David Lloyd George’, in Robert Eccleshall and Graham Walker (eds), Biographical Dictionary of British Prime Ministers (London: Routledge, 1998), p.260; Kenneth O. Morgan, ‘David Lloyd George, First Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor (1863–1945)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004, online edn, Oct 2008 [www.oxforddnb.com]; Cross (ed.), Life With Lloyd George, p.168. 18 Cross (ed.), Life With Lloyd George, p.118; Campbell, If Love Were All, p.439. 19 Campbell, If Love Were All, p.436; Thomson, Lloyd George, p.37; Cross (ed.), Life With Lloyd George, pp.201, 254; Paul Addison, ‘Lloyd George and Compromise Peace in the Second World War’, in A.J.P. Taylor (ed.), Lloyd George: Twelve Essays (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1971), p.362. 20 Cross (ed.), Life With Lloyd George, p.238; Addison, ‘Lloyd George and Compromise Peace in the Second World War’, pp.362, 381; Thomson, Lloyd George, p.449. 21 Addison, ‘Lloyd George and Compromise Peace in the Second World War’, pp.372, 374; Morgan, Lloyd George, p.191; Rowland, Lloyd George, pp.772, 776, 781; Cross (ed.), Life With Lloyd George, p.281. 22 Cross (ed.), Life With Lloyd George, pp.158, 301, 315, 333; Hague, The Pain and the Privilege, pp.533–4. 23 Robert Blake, The Unknown Prime Minister: The Life and Times of Andrew Bonar Law 1858–1923 (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1955); R.J.Q. Adams, Bonar Law (London: John Murray, 1999); Andrew Taylor, Bonar Law (London: Haus Publishing, 2006). 24 Trevor Lloyd, ‘James Ramsay MacDonald’, in John P. Mackintosh (ed.), British Prime Ministers in the Twentieth Century, vol. 1, Balfour to Chamberlain (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977), p.156. 25 Dick Leonard, A Century of Premiers: Salisbury to Blair (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005), pp.141–2. 26 Keith Middlemas and John Barnes, Baldwin (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), p.803. 27 Roy Jenkins, Baldwin (London: Collins, 1987), p.135; Kevin Morgan, Ramsay MacDonald (London: Haus Publishing, 2006), p.81; David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (London: Cape, 1977), pp.693–700, 762, 772. 28 Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald, pp.767–8, 775, 777. 29 Ibid., pp.778–82. 30 Ibid., pp.783–8. 31 Ibid., pp.398, 775; James Margach, The Abuse of Power (London: W.H. Allen, 1978), pp.48–9.



Notes 251

32 Middlemas and Barnes, Baldwin, p.1042. 33 Harold Nicolson MP quoted in: Kenneth Young, Stanley Baldwin (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976), p.143. A cynic might argue that the warmth of the parliamentary farewells may have been increased by Baldwin’s announcement, the day before he retired, of a 50 per cent increase in MPs salaries! 34 Philip Williamson, ‘Baldwin’s Reputation: Politics and History 1937–1967’, The Historical Journal, vol. 47, no. 1, 2004, pp.127–68. 35 Middlemas and Barnes, Baldwin, pp.807, 825, 930. 36 Ibid., pp.960–4, 1018. 37 Thomas Jones, Dictionary of National Biography entry, quoted in Hugo Young (ed.), Political Lives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p.66; A.W. Baldwin, My Father: The True Story (London: Allen and Unwin, 1956), p.304; Philip Williamson, Stanley Baldwin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p.57, n.60. 38 Jenkins, Baldwin, p.162. 39 Stuart Ball (ed.), Parliament and Politics in the Age of Churchill and Attlee: The Headlam Diaries 1935–1951 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p.130; Young, Stanley Baldwin, p.144. 40 Middlemas and Barnes, Baldwin, pp.1042–7; Philip Williamson and Edward Baldwin (eds), The Baldwin Papers: A Conservative Statesman 1908–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp.449–53, 458. 41 Jenkins, Baldwin, pp.30–1; Harold Macmillan, The Past Masters (London: Macmillan, 1975), pp.120–1; Middlemas and Barnes, Baldwin, pp.1055–61; G.M. Young, Stanley Baldwin (London: Ruper Hart-Davis, 1952), p.250; Williamson and Baldwin, The Baldwin Papers, p.474. 42 Mark Hitchens, Prime Ministers’ Wives – And One Husband (London: Peter Owen, 2004), pp.143–51. 43 Williamson and Baldwin, The Baldwin Papers, p.480; Williamson, ‘Baldwin’s Reputation’, pp.147–150. 44 Baldwin, My Father: The True Story, p.319. 45 Keith Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1946), p.443; Graham Macklin, Chamberlain (London: Haus Publishing, 2006, p.86). 46 Graham Stewart, Burying Caesar: Churchill, Chamberlain and the Battle for the Tory Party (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999), p.387. 47 Lynne Olson, Troublesome Young Men: The Churchill Conspiracy of 1940 (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), pp.311–12. 48 Nick Smart, ‘Four Days in May: The Norway Debate and the Downfall of Neville Chamberlain’, Parliamentary History, vol. 17, no. 2 (1998), pp.215–43. 49 Stewart, Burying Caesar, pp.422, 424; John Barnes and David Nicholson (eds), The Empire at Bay: The Leo Amery Diaries 1929–1945 (London: Hutchinson, 1988), pp.614–15. 50 Roy Jenkins, Churchill (London: Macmillan, 2001), p.602; Robert Self, Neville Chamberlain: A Biography (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), p.432. 51 Stewart, Burying Caesar, p.424; Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p.315. 52 Self, Neville Chamberlain, p.433; Olson, Troublesome Young Men, p.328; Andrew Roberts, Eminent Churchillians (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994), pp.142, 144, 169–70. 53 H. Montgomery Hyde, Neville Chamberlain (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976), p.175; Stewart, Burying Caesar, p.425. 54 Self, Neville Chamberlain, pp.434–5.



252 Notes

Notes 253 55 John Lukacs, Five Days in London: May 1940 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), p.121; Jenkins, Churchill, p.602; Self, Neville Chamberlain, pp.436, 438–9; Hyde, Neville Chamberlain, p.175. 56 Gilbert, Finest Hour, pp.334, 357, 546, 550, 577. 57 Lukacs, Five Days in London. 58 Self, Neville Chamberlain, pp.442–8.

1 Francis Williams, A Prime Minister Remembers (London: Heinemann, 1961), p.255. 2 Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival 1940–1965 (London: Sphere Books, 1968), p.662. 3 Bernard Donoughue and G.W. Jones, Herbert Morrison: Portrait of a Politician (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), p.535; Kenneth O. Morgan, ‘United Kingdom: A Comparative Case Study of Labour Prime Ministers Attlee, Wilson, Callaghan and Blair’, Journal of Legislative Studies, vol. 10, no. 2/3, 2004, p.42; Robert Pearce, Attlee (London: Longman, 1997), p.177. 4 Pearce, Attlee, pp.179, 181. 5 Donoughue and Jones, Herbert Morrison, pp.535–6; Pearce, Attlee, p.181. 6 Kenneth Harris, Attlee (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), pp.535–6, 541, 543; Brian Brivati, Hugh Gaitskell (London: Richard Cohen Books, 1996), p.225. 7 House of Lords debates, 4 July 1963, col. 1030; Clarissa Eden, A Memoir: From Churchill to Eden (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007), p.225; The Times: 12 April 1957, 25 January 1958. 8 D.J. Heasman, ‘“My Station and its Duties”: The Attlee Version’, Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 21, September 1967, p.80; Francis Beckett, Clem Attlee (London: Politico’s, 2000), p.306. 9 House of Lords debates, 4 July 1963, col. 1029; 4 February 1964, cols. 37–40; 18 February 1964, cols. 781–2; 25 February 1964, col. 1069; 18 November 1964, col. 607. 10 Harris, Attlee, p.545; Beckett, Clem Attlee, p.310. 11 Harris, Attlee, pp.543, 546–7, 557, 561; Beckett, Clem Attlee, pp.310, 313, 319; Tony Benn, Out of the Wilderness: Diaries 1963–67 (London: Hutchinson, 1987), p.123. 12 Harris, Attlee, p.545; Heasman, ‘“My Station and its Duties”: The Attlee Version’, p.83; Beckett, Attlee, pp.308–9; The Times, 11 April 1957. 13 Beckett, Clem Attlee, p.299; Kenneth O. Morgan, Labour People: Leaders and Lieutenants, Hardie to Kinnock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p.135; Harris, Attlee, p.519; Clem Attlee: The Granada Historical Records Interview (London: Panther Record, 1967); Earl Attlee, Empire Into Commonwealth (London: Oxford University Press, 1961); Eric Stokes review of Empire Into Commonwealth in Journal of African History, vol. 2, no. 2, 1961, p.356. 14 Pearce, Attlee, p.183; The Times: 25 September 1959, 1 October 1959, 26 October 1959, 7 November 1959, 20 September 1960, 12 June 1961, 30 September 1961, 10 October 1961, 1 November 1966, 11 April 1967, 27 May 1967. 15 Harris, Attlee, pp.558, 561; The Times: 23 May 1961, 12 December 1962. 16 Beckett, Clem Attlee, p.316. 17 Martin Gilbert, Never Despair: Winston S. Churchill 1945–1965 (London: Heinemann, 1988), p.110; Roy Jenkins, ‘Churchill: The Government of 1951–1955’, in



Chapter 7

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22

23

24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36

37 38

Robert Blake and William Roger Louis (eds), Churchill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p.491; Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival 1940–1965 (London: Sphere Books edition, 1968), p.339. Moran, The Struggle for Survival, pp.625, 626, 655, 673, 676. Gilbert, Never Despair, pp.1140, 1152, 1160; Moran, The Struggle for Survival, pp.681–2, 683. Moran, The Struggle for Survival, pp.401–3, 422; Kevin Theakston, Winston Churchill and the British Constitution (London: Politico’s, 2004), pp.58–61. House of Commons debates, 30 November 1959, cols. 870–1; 30 November 1961, cols. 608–9; Moran, The Struggle for Survival, pp.723–4; Gilbert, Never Despair, pp.1270–2. Roy Jenkins, Churchill (London: Macmillan, 2001), p.910; David A. Thomas, Churchill: The Member for Woodford (Ilford: Frank Cass, 1995), pp.198, 203–4; Gilbert, Never Despair, p.1350. David Reynolds, In Command of History (London: Penguin, 2005), pp.xxii, 16–18, 509, 533; Gilbert, Never Despair, pp.256, 304, 1229; Anthony Montague Browne, Long Sunset: Memoirs of Winston Churchill’s Last Private Secretary (London: Indigo, 1996), p.236. Montague Browne, Long Sunset, p.196; Jenkins, Churchill, p.901. Gilbert, Never Despair, p.1122; Moran, The Struggle for Survival, pp.734–5. Moran, The Struggle for Survival, pp.735, 743, 807; Gilbert, Never Despair, p.1203; Montague Brown, Long Sunset, pp.210–11, 213. Jenkins, Churchill, p.902; Moran, The Struggle for Survival, p.787; Clive Ponting, Churchill (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994), p.806; Gilbert, Never Despair, pp.1294–5; Montague Browne, Long Sunset, p.264. Moran, The Struggle for Survival, pp.560, 691, 717, 732, 739; Montague Browne, Long Sunset, pp.302–3. Gilbert, Never Despair, pp.1234, 1249, 1266, 1270, 1317; Moran, The Struggle for Survival, pp.15, 655, 721. John Ramsden, Man of the Century: Winston Churchill and His Legend Since 1945 (London: HarperCollins, 2002), ch. 1. David Owen, In Sickness and in Power: Illness in Heads of Government During the Last 100 Years (London: Methuen, 2008), ch. 3. D.R. Thorpe, Eden (London: Chatto & Windus, 2003), pp.548–50. Clarissa Eden, A Memoir: From Churchill to Eden (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007), p.264; David Carlton, Anthony Eden (London: Allen and Unwin, 1981), pp.466–7; Cherie Booth and Cate Haste, The Goldfish Bowl: Married to the Prime Minister 1955–1997 (London: Chatto & Windus, 2004), p.30; Robert Rhodes James, Anthony Eden (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), p.608. Carlton, Eden, p.469; Rhodes James, Eden, p.609; The Times: 13 March 1962, 18 February 1963, 7 September 1963. Rhodes James, Eden, pp.605–6; Thorpe, Eden, p.553. Thorpe, Eden, pp.556, 562; Rhodes James, Eden, pp.611–12, 618; David Dutton, Anthony Eden: A Life and Reputation (London: Hodder Headline, 1997), p.10; Carlton, Eden, p.468. The Times: 28 December 1964, 18 August 1966, 29 March 1967, 25 October 1974; Anthony Eden, Another World 1897–1917 (London: Allen Lane, 1976). Rhodes James, Eden, pp.614–15; Peter Beck, ‘Politicians versus Historians: Lord Avon’s “Appeasement Battle” against “Lamentably, Appeasement-Minded” Historians’, Twentieth Century British History, vol. 9, no. 3, 1998, pp.396–419; Carlton, Eden, p.473.



254 Notes

39 Rhodes James, Eden, p.612; Dutton, Eden: A Life and Reputation, pp.1–2, 18. 40 Rhodes James, Eden, p.613; Eden, A Memoir: From Churchill to Eden, p.268; Carlton, Eden, p.477. 41 Carlton, Eden, pp.473, 476; Rhodes James, Eden, pp.608, 617; Thorpe, Eden, pp.578, 579; The Times, 23 July 1962; Victor Rothwell, Anthony Eden: A Political Biography 1931–57 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p.248. 42 Thorpe, Eden, p.575; Rhodes James, Eden, p.610; Carlton, Eden, pp.476–7; House of Lords debates, 8 November 1962, cols. 412–25. 43 Thorpe, Eden, p.584. 44 Alistair Horne, Macmillan 1957–1986: Volume II of the Official Biography (London: Macmillan, 1989), p.568; Roy Jenkins, Gallery of 20th Century Portraits (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1988), pp.124–5. 45 Harold Evans, Downing Street Diary (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1981), pp.112, 123; Horne, Macmillan 1957–1986, pp.266–7, 536. 46 The Guardian: 10 February 1964, 11 April 1964; Horne, Macmillan 1957–1986, pp.572–3, 622, 689 fn.19; Julian Amery, ‘Macmillan: The Case For’, The Spectator, 10 January 1987, p.17. 47 Horne, Macmillan 1957–1986, p.618. 48 Richard Davenport-Hines, The Macmillans (London: Heinemann, 1992), p.333. 49 The Guardian, 13 March 1975; H.C.G. Matthew, ‘Macmillan, (Maurice) Harold, First Earl of Stockton (1894–1986)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004, online edn, Jan 2008 [www.oxforddnb.com]; Horne, Macmillan 1957–1986, pp.612–13. 50 Matthew, ODNB; The Guardian: 15 October 1964, 7 April 1975, 3 June 1975, 21 October 1976, 23 October 1976; Evans, Downing Street Diary, pp.303–4; Davenport-Hines, The Macmillans, p.335; Clarissa Eden, A Memoir: From Churchill to Eden (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007), p.126; Nigel Fisher, Harold Macmillan (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), pp.359–60. 51 Stephen Evans, ‘The Earl of Stockton’s Critique of Thatcherism’, Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 51, no. 1, 1998, pp.17–35; The Guardian: 6 February 1979, 12 February 1979, 8 March 1979, 15 October 1980, 20 October 1982, 20 October 1983, 21 October 1983; The Observer, 17 November 1985. 52 Horne, Macmillan 1957–1986, p.622; Edward Heath, The Course of My Life (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1998), p.678. 53 Dermot Englefield, Janet Seaton and Isobel White, Facts About the British Prime Ministers (London: Mansell, 1995), p.311; D.R.Thorpe, Alec Douglas-Home (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1996), p.8 54 Richard Crossman, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister: Volume One Minister of Housing 1964–66 (London: Hamish Hamilton and Jonathan Cape, 1975), pp.118, 292; David Dutton, Douglas-Home (London: Haus Publishing, 2006), pp.87, 90; Douglas Hurd, ‘Home, Alexander Frederick Douglas – Fourteenth Earl of Home and Baron Home of the Hirsel (1903–1995)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 200444 [www.oxforddnb.com]; Nigel Fisher, The Tory Leaders (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977), p.122; Thorpe, Alec Douglas-Home, p.378. 55 The Times, 14 January 1966; Mark Garnett and Ian Aitken, Splendid! Splendid! The Authorized Biography of Willie Whitelaw (London: Jonathan Cape, 2002), p.67. 56 The Times: 5 August 1965, 20 April 1966. 57 Dutton, Douglas-Home, p.95; The Times, 22 June 1970; Hurd in ODNB. 58 Guardian, 27 April 1970; John Campbell, Edward Heath (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993), p.296; Garnett and Aitken, Splendid! Splendid!, p.165.



Notes 255

59 Stuart Ball and Anthony Seldon (eds), The Heath Government 1970–74 (London: Longman, 1996), pp.33, 263, 268. 60 Ball and Seldon (eds), The Heath Government 1970–74, pp.310–11; Edward Heath, The Course of My Life (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1998), p.468; Thorpe, Alec Douglas-Home, pp.430–1. 61 Dutton, Douglas-Home, pp.94, 99–101; Ball and Seldon (eds), The Heath Government 1970–74, p.297; Thorpe, Alec Douglas-Home, pp.427–8. 62 The Guardian, 27 April 1970. 63 Bernard Donoughue, Downing Street Diary: With Harold Wilson in No. 10 (London: Cape, 2005), p.71; Dutton, Douglas-Home, p.106. 64 The Guardian: 13 December 1976, 15 February 1979, 16 February 1979, 5 March 1979, 1 March 1980, 9 March 1983, 30 September 1983; Dutton, Douglas-Home, p.106; Thorpe, Alec Douglas-Home, p.456. 65 Dutton, Douglas-Home, pp.107, 143. 66 D.R. Thorpe, ‘Alec Douglas-Home: The Unexpected Prime Minister’, in Alistair Horne (ed.), Telling Lives (London: Macmillan, 2000), p.149; Heath, The Course of My Life, p.468.

Chapter 8 1 Philip Whitehead, The Writing on the Wall: Britain in the Seventies (London: Michael Joseph, 1985), p.132; John Campbell, Edward Heath (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993), pp.576–7, 623–4, 658–9. 2 Douglas Hurd, ‘Heath, Sir Edward Richard George (1916–2005)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn, Oxford University Press, Jan 2009 [www.odnb.com]. 3 The Guardian, 25 March 1992; Campbell, Edward Heath, p.806. 4 Hurd in ODNB; Campbell, Edward Heath, pp.718–22. 5 The Guardian, 18 July 2005; The Independent, 18 July 2005. 6 Edward Heath, The Course of My Life (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1998), pp.83–4, 532, 536. 7 Campbell, Edward Heath, pp.675, 696, 726–7; Ion Trewin (ed.), The Hugo Young Papers (London: Allen lane, 2008), p.109. 8 Hurd in ODNB; The Guardian, 6 November 1980; Heath, The Course of My Life, pp.594, 597, 598, 618, 708, 715–16; Campbell, Edward Heath, pp.679, 765, 804; The Independent, 18 July 2005. 9 Hurd in ODNB; Campbell, Edward Heath, pp.703, 796–8; The Guardian, 19 July 2005. 10 Campbell, Edward Heath, pp.xx, 680–1, 729, 742; Mark Garnett and Ian Aitken, Splendid! Splendid! The Authorized Biography of Willie Whitelaw (London: Jonathan Cape, 2002), pp.225–7; Hailsham Diary entry for 20 January 1976, Margaret Thatcher Foundation website [www.margaretthatcher.org/archive], document 111153. 11 John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher Volume One: The Grocer’s Daughter (London: Jonathan Cape, 2000), p.297; Campbell, Edward Heath, pp.713–15. 12 Hurd in ODNB; Campbell, Edward Heath, pp.35, 778–92; Heath, The Course of My Life, pp.580, 627; The Guardian, 18 July 2005. 13 The Guardian, 19 July 2005. 14 Campbell, Edward Heath, pp.694, 749; The Guardian: 29 September 1998, 30 September 1998, 10 October 1998; The Times, 18 December 1998.



256 Notes

15 Campbell, Edward Heath, pp.694–5; Denis MacShane, Heath (London: Haus Publishing, 2006), p.145; The Guardian: 11 January 1999, 26 February 1999, 25 March 1999. 16 Tony Benn, More Time for Politics: Diaries 2001–2007 (London: Hutchinson, 2007), pp.10, 51, 97; House of Commons Debates, 18 July 2005, col. 1079; Sunday Times, 13 September 1998; The Independent: 14 September 1998, 19 December 1998. 17 The Independent, 18 July 2005; John Campbell, Edward Heath, pp.xiv, 679, 680, 698, 716. 18 Tony Benn, Against the Tide: Diaries 1973–76 (London: Hutchinson, 1989), pp.368–9, 543, 624; Philip Ziegler, Wilson: The Authorised Life (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993), p.493; The Guardian, 24 June 1976. 19 Harold Wilson, A Prime Minister on Prime Ministers (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson and Michael Joseph, 1977), pp.187–8; Bernard Donoughue, The Heat of the Kitchen (London: Politico’s, 2003), p.178; Barbara Castle, The Castle Diaries 1974–76 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980), p.690; Roy Jenkins, ‘Wilson, (James) Harold, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx (1916–1995)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Sept 2004, online edn, Jan 2009 [www.oxforddnb.com]. 20 Paul Routledge, Wilson (London: Haus Publishing, 2006), pp.3–5; Roy Jenkins, A Life at the Centre (London: Macmillan, 1991), pp.297–8; Tony Benn, Office Without Power: Diaries 1968–72 (London: Hutchinson, 1988), p.318. 21 Donoughue, The Heat of the Kitchen, pp.178–82; The Guardian, 1 November 1986; Bernard Donoughue, Downing Street Diary Volume 2: With James Callaghan in No. 10 (London: Jonathan Cape, 2008), p.371; Harold – The Wilson Years (Colchester: ITV, March 2006), p.18; Peter Garrard, ‘Cognitive Archaeology: Uses, Methods and Results’, Journal of Neurolinguistics, vol. 20, 2008, pp.9–13; David Owen, In Sickness and in Power: Illness in Heads of Government During the Last 100 Years (London: Methuen, 2008), pp.84–5. 22 The Guardian, 17 March 1976; Ziegler, Wilson, p.492; Donoughue, Downing Street Diary Volume 2: With James Callaghan in No. 10, p.154. 23 Benn, Against the Tide, pp.560. 571; The Guardian, 23 April 1976; Ziegler, Wilson, pp.494–8; Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson (London: HarperCollins, 1992), pp.685–9. 24 David Leigh, The Wilson Plot (London: Heinemann, 1988); Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, Smear! Wilson and the Secret State (London: Fourth Estate, 1991); Tony Benn, Conflicts of Interest: Diaires 1977–80 (London: Hutchinson, 1990), p.378; Donoughue, Downing Street Diary Volume 2: With James Callaghan in No. 10, pp.93, 286; Pimlott, Harold Wilson, p.697. 25 Donoughue, The Heat of the Kitchen, pp.190–1; Bernard Donoughue, Downing Street Diary: With Harold Wilson in No. 10 (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005), p.722. 26 Pimlott, Harold Wilson, p.690; Benn, Conflicts of Interest, p.264; Benn, Against the Tide, pp.557, 693; Ziegler, Wilson, pp.503, 509–10; Donoughue, Downing Street Diary Volume 2: With James Callaghan in No. 10, pp.164–5. 27 Pimlott, Harold Wilson, p.682; Benn, Conflicts of Interest, p.399; Donoughue, Downing Street Diary: With Harold Wilson in No. 10, p.682; Ziegler, Wilson, p.503. 28 Donoughue, Downing Street Diary Volume 2: With James Callaghan in No. 10, p.451; Routledge, Wilson, p.134. 29 The Guardian: 24 June 1976, 15 October 1976, 21 October 1976; The Economist, 30 October 1976; Joe Haines, Glimmers of Twilight (London: Politico’s, 2003), p.124; Donoughue, Downing Street Diary: With Harold Wilson in No. 10, p.614; Donoughue, Downing Street Diary Volume 2: With James Callaghan in No. 10, p.36; Kenneth O. Morgan, Labour People: Leaders and Lieutenants, Hardie to Kinnock



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39 40

41

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45

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p.259; The Times, 7 April 1981; Ziegler, Wilson, p.509. Donoughue, Downing Street Diary Volume 2: With James Callaghan in No. 10, p.367; The Guardian, 17 March 1976; The Observer: 21 October 1979, 21 January 1990. Donoughue, Downing Street Diary Volume 2: With James Callaghan in No. 10, pp.446, 493; Pimlott, Harold Wilson, p.727; The Observer, 5 December 1976; The Guardian, 3 March 1983; Ziegler, Wilson, pp.511–13. Harold – The Wilson Years, p.19; ‘The Truth about Harold Wilson – After 30 Years of Scandalous Rumours’, Daily Mail, 22 June 2007; Cherie Booth and Cate Haste, The Goldfish Bowl: Married to the Prime Minister 1955–1997 (London: Chatto and Windus, 2004), p.145. ‘Callaghan Expects “Worst PM” Tag’, BBC News Online, 8 October 1999 [http:// news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/uk_politics/468625.stm]; Kevin Theakston and Mark Gill, ‘Rating 20th-Century British Prime Ministers’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, vol. 8, no. 2, 2006; Booth and Haste, The Goldfish Bowl, p.178. James Callaghan, Time and Chance (London: Collins, 1987), p.300; Kenneth O. Morgan, Callaghan: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p.382. Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (London: Michael Joseph, 1989), p.466. David Owen, Time to Declare (London: Michael Joseph, 1991), p.442, quoting The Guardian, 18 June 1980; Trewin (ed.), The Hugo Young Papers, p.153; Morgan, Callaghan, pp.707–18. Trewin (ed.), The Hugo Young Papers, p.147. Lord Morgan, ‘Leadership and Change: Prime Ministers in the Post-War World – James Callaghan’, Gresham College Lecture, 5 June 2007, with introductory and concluding remarks by Peter Hennessy; Morgan, Callaghan, p.721; The Guardian, 4 June 1985; House of Lords debates, 28 November 1989, col. 391; The Times, 19 March 2002. Morgan, Callaghan, pp.725–9; The Times, 10 March 1987; The Economist, 14 March 1987. Morgan, Callaghan, pp.731–5; Gerald Ford, ‘Personal Reflections on My Experience as a Former President’, in Richard Norton Smith and Timothy Walch (eds), Farewell to the Chief: Former Presidents in American Public Life (Worland, Wyoming: High Plains Publishing Co., 1990), p.173. Morgan, Callaghan, pp.278–9, 510–11, 729, 735; Roy Hattersley, ‘Callaghan, Leonard James, Baron Callaghan of Cardiff (1912–2005)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn, Oxford University Press, Jan 2009 [www.oxforddnb.com]; House of Lords debates, 26 February 1996, col. 1254. The Guardian, 13 April 1987; The Observer, 12 April 1987; The Economist, 11 April 1987. London Evening Standard, 15 October 2008; Western Mail, 18 August 2005; Morgan, Callaghan, pp.377–81, 737–42. Trewin (ed.), The Hugo Young Papers, p.377; Morgan, Callaghan, pp.744–5, 748; Morgan, Gresham College lecture on Callaghan; House of Lords debates: 30 March 1999, cols. 216–19; 17 May 1999, cols. 66–7, 71 ; 26 October 1999, cols. 229–31. ‘“Tough Operator” Remembered’, BBC News website, 26 March 2005 [http://news. bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4385189.stm]; Booth and Haste, The Goldfish Bowl, p.181; The Times, 27 March 2002.



258 Notes

Notes 259

1 Richard Vinen, Thatcher’s Britain (London: Simon and Schuster, 2009), p.57; Carol Thatcher, Below The Parapet: The Biography of Denis Thatcher (London: HarperCollins, 1996), pp.253–4; Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: HarperCollins, 1993), pp.831–2. 2 Thatcher, Below The Parapet, pp.132–3, 278, 279, 275–6; Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power (London: Harper Collins, 1995), pp.466–7; John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher, volume two, The Iron Lady (London: Jonathan Cape, 2003), pp.751–4; John Sergeant, Maggie: Her Fatal Legacy (London: Macmillan, 2005), p.184. 3 John Major, The Autobiography (London: HarperCollins, 1999), pp.206–7; Campbell, The Iron Lady, p.750; Sergeant Maggie: Her Fatal Legacy, pp.173–4. 4 Campbell, The Iron Lady, pp.674, 755–6, 758–9, 775; ‘Thatcher: Après moi’, BBC News website, 26 April 1999 [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/special_report/ 1999/04/99/thatcher_anniversary/325148.stm]. 5 Peter Clarke, ‘Margaret Thatcher’s Place in History: Two Views’, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, vol. 24, no. 3, 2002, p.368; The Guardian, 18 October 1993; The Independent, 23 October 1993; The Sunday Independent, 24 October 1993; Lord Gilmour, ‘The Thatcher Memoirs’, Twentieth Century British History, vol. 5, no. 2, 1994, p.258; Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, pp.28–9. 6 Thatcher, The Path to Power, p.475; Sergeant, Maggie: Her Fatal Legacy, pp.193–4; Campbell, The Iron Lady, pp.746, 751. 7 Anthony Seldon, Major: A Political Life (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997), p.560; Campbell, The Iron Lady, pp.762, 767, 781; The Guardian, 21 September 1999. 8 Campbell, The Iron Lady, pp.765, 768, 772, 773–4; Major, The Autobiography, pp.275, 350; Sergeant, Maggie: Her Fatal Legacy, pp.275, 265. 9 Seldon, Major, p.561; Sergeant, Maggie: Her Fatal Legacy, pp.313, 317, 321; Campbell, The Iron Lady, pp.751, 785, 789; Anthony Seldon, Blair (London: The Free Press, 2004), pp.448–50. 10 Campbell, The Iron Lady, pp.787, 790, 791; Sergeant, Maggie: Her Fatal Legacy, pp.343–4, 345–6; Mark Garnett, ‘Banality in Politics: Margaret Thatcher and the Biographers’, Political Studies Review, vol. 5, 2007, pp.181–2. 11 Campbell, The Iron Lady, pp.795–7. 12 Thatcher, Below The Parapet, p.287. 13 Carol Thatcher, A Swim-On Part in the Goldfish Bowl (London: Headline Books, 2008); The Guardian, 3 February 2007. 14 The Sunday Times, 12 April 2009, 26 April 2009. 15 Garnett, ‘Banality in Politics: Margaret Thatcher and the Biographers’, p.181. 16 John Major, The Autobiography (London: HarperCollins, 1999), pp.721, 722–3, 725–9, 735. 17 Major, The Autobiography, pp.xviii, 309. 18 Daily Telegraph, 27 July 2002. 19 Major, The Autobiography, pp.721–2; Anthony Seldon, Major: A Political Life (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997), pp.3–4; Keith Alderman, ‘The Conservative Party Leadership Election of 1997’, Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 51, no. 1, 1998, p.3; Alan Clark, The Tories: Conservatives and the Nation State 1922–1997 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998), p.440; Tim Heppell,



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Choosing the Tory Leader: Conservative Party Leadership Elections from Heath to Cameron (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), p.122. ‘Breakfast With Frost’, BBC TV, 8 October 2000; Public Administration Committee, ‘The Honours System’, HC 212-II, 2003–04, qs. 906, 910; The Times, 21 May 2004; Daily Mail, 30 September 2002, 27 May 2003. The Observer, 17 October 1999; The Times, 12 October 1999; The Guardian: 5 February 1998, 3 November 1999; Robert Taylor, Major (London: Haus Publishing, 2006), p.122; Major, The Autobiography, p.xxi. Private information; The Spectator, 2 June 2007; The Times, 19 May 2007; John Major, More Than a Game: The Story of Cricket’s Early Years (London: HarperCollins, 2007), p.9; The Sunday Times, 4 November 2007; ABC News Online, 15 May 2007 [http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200705/s1923188.htm]; Daily Telegraph, 7 March 2009. The Guardian: 5 February 1999, 3 February 2007; The Independent, 24 February 2007. Daily Telegraph, 22 March 2002; The People, 8 February 1998; The Independent, 18 December 1999; Independent on Sunday, 4 April 2004; The Times, 18 December 1999; The Guardian: 31 October 2001, 3 February 2007. The Guardian, 3 February 2007; Sergeant, Maggie: Her Fatal Legacy, p.61; Booth and Haste, The Goldfish Bowl, p.261; The Times, 19 May 2007; House of Commons Public Administration Committee evidence, 10 November 2009, q.169. The Independent, 14 October 2004; ‘How to be Ex-Prime Minister’, BBC2 TV, 17 July 2007; private information; ‘BBC Sunday AM’, 23 October 2005; The Times: 28 April 2007, 2 May 2007. The Times, 26 April 2007; Major, The Autobiography, p.732; The Guardian, 16 March 2001. Daily Telegraph, 23 August 2001; Daily Mail, 25 October 2003. ‘BBC Sunday AM’, 23 October 2005; BBC News 24, 1 March 2006; Press Association, 8 October 2006; The Guardian: 25 April 2007, 26 May 2007. Daily Telegraph: 24 October 2003, 9 March 2007; House of Commons debates, 2 February 1999, cols. 767–72; ‘BBC Sunday AM’, 16 July 2006. The Times: 6 June 2008, 16 June 2009; The Guardian, 14 July 2008; Daily Telegraph: 14 December 2008, 7 May 2009, 24 July 2009. House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee evidence, 10 November 2009, q.169; Daily Mail, 11 November 2009. MORI satisfaction ratings [http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/ researcharchive/poll.aspx?oItemId=88&view=wide]. Anthony Seldon, Blair (London: The Free Press, 2004), p.678; Anthony Seldon, Blair Unbound (London: Simon & Schuster, 2007), pp.206–7, 277, 498; Alastair Campbell, The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries (London: Hutchinson, 2007), pp.628–9. Seldon, Blair Unbound, p.573; The Times Magazine, 25 June 2007. Seldon, Blair Unbound, pp.299, 488–9; Cherie Blair, Speaking For Myself (London: Little, Brown, 2008), p.402; BBC News website, 14 January 2006 [http://news.bbc. co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk_politics/4611836.stm]; Sunday Times, 9 September 2007; The Guardian, 15 September 2006. Daily Telegraph: 20 January 2007, 4 May 2007; The Observer, 4 March 2007; The Times Magazine, 25 June 2007. The Times Magazine, 25 June 2007; The Guardian: 14 December 2005, 8 January 2007, 12 February 2007; Blair, Speaking For Myself, pp.368–9; Seldon, Blair Unbound,



260 Notes

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

48 49 50

51 52 53

p.577; Daily Telegraph, 20 January 2007; The Observer, 4 March 2007; The Times, 30 March 2006. Daily Telegraph: 13 May 2007, 6 October 2007, 21 February 2009; Daily Mail, 23 April 2008. Seldon, Blair Unbound, p.577; The Guardian, 26 October 2007; Daily Telegraph, 28 February 2009. ‘What can Blair’s Climate Trip Achieve?’, BBC News, 14 March 2008 [http://news. bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7296130.stm]; The Guardian, 14 March 2008. The Guardian, 11 January 2008; The Times Magazine, 23 June 2007; Daily Mail, 4 May 2007; Sunday Times Magazine, 6 July 2008. Mail on Sunday, 28 October 2007; The Times, 9 November 2007; The Sunday Times: 22 February 2009, 5 April 2009; The Guardian, 9 November 2007. The Times: 11 January 2008, 29 January 2008; Daily Telegraph, 11 January 2008. The Times: 11 January 2008, 13 January 2008, 29 January 2008; The Guardian, 11 January 2008; Daily Telegraph, 11 January 2008. Sunday Times, 22 February 2009; Financial Times, 30 October 2009. Sunday Times Magazine, 6 July 2008; Observer, 23 December 2007; Time, 28 May 2008; The Times: 8 April 2008, 10 April 2009; The Independent, 4 April 2008; BBC News website, 13 April 2009 [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7994618.stm]. New Statesman, 23 March 2009; Time, 28 May 2008; The Times, 8 April 2008. The Economist, 2 June 2007; The Times, 1 September 2006. Daily Telegraph: 15 June 2007, 24 April 2009; Sunday Times, 14 October 2007; The Times: 15 October 2007, 28 April 2008, 5 February 2009; The Guardian: 12 January 2008, 25 May 2009; Mail on Sunday, 3 August 2008; Observer, 3 August 2008. Independent on Sunday, 24 May 2009; Sunday Times, 26 October 2008; Observer, 21 June 2006; The Guardian, 24 April 2008; New Statesman, 16 October 2008. The Times, 29 October 2009; Sunday Times, 1 November 2009. Sunday Times Magazine, 6 July 2008; Observer, 16 March 2008; The Guardian, 1 May 2008; Sunday Times, 16 December 2007.

Chapter 10 1 Richard Norton Smith and Timothy Walch (eds), Farewell to the Chief: Former Presidents in American Public Life (Worland, Wyoming: High Plains Publishing, 1990), p.xi; Andrew Jack, ‘Into the Sunset: How Ex-Leaders Adjust to Life with Less Power’, Financial Times, 26 December 2007; James Fallows, ‘Post-President for Life’, The Atlantic Monthly, March 2003. 2 Irina Belenky, ‘The Making of the Ex-Presidents, 1797–1993: Six Recurrent Models’, Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 1, 1999, pp.150–65. 3 Fallows, ‘Post-President for Life’; Thomas F. Schaller and Thomas W. Williams, ‘The Contemporary Presidency: Postpresidential Influence in the Postmodern Era’, Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 1, 2003, pp.188–200; George H.W. Bush, Lecture to the US Senate, 20 January 1999 [http://www.senate.gov/ artandhistory/history/common/generic/Leaders_Lecture_Series_Bush.htm]; Mark Updegrove, Second Acts: Presidential Lives and Legacies After the White House (Guilford, Connecticut: Lyons Press, 2006), pp.207–39. 4 Jean Blondel, World Leaders: Heads of Government in the Postwar Period (London: Sage, 1980), pp.210–11. 5 Fallows, ‘Post-President for Life’.



Notes 261

6 Updegrove, Second Acts, pp.126–30; Max J. Skidmore, After the White House: Former Presidents as Private Citizens (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp.141–2. 7 Norton Smith and Walch, Farewell to the Chief, pp.142–5; Harry S. Truman, Mr. Citizen (London: Hutchinson, 1961), pp.103–12; Marie Hecht, Beyond the Presidency: The Residues of Power (New York: Macmillan, 1976), p.311. 8 Updegrove, Second Acts, p.246; Douglas Brinkley, The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey Beyond the White House (New York: Viking, 1998), p.474. 9 Truman, Mr. Citizen, p.28; Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Ruler 1945–1970 (London: HarperCollins/Harvill, 1991), p.581. 10 Congressional Research Service, Former Presidents: Federal Pension and Retirement Benefits (98-249 GOV, 20 August 2007); Updegrove, Second Acts, p.120; Leonard Benardo and Jennifer Weiss, Citizen-in-Chief: The Second Lives of the American Presidents (New York: William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2009), pp.25–120. 11 Updegrove, Second Acts, pp.120–1; The Washington Post, 23 February 2007. 12 Roy Jenkins, Gladstone (London: Macmillan, 1995), p.625; Updegrove, Second Acts, p.255. 13 Skidmore, After the White House, pp.84–5; Updegrove, Second Acts, p.11; New York Times, 20 June 2004. 14 Skidmore, After the White House, p.118; Alan Evan Schenker, ‘Former Prime Ministers and Presidents: Suggestions for Study and Comparison’, Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 3, 1985, p.502. 15 Belenky, ‘The Making of the Ex-Presidents, 1797–1993: Six Recurrent Models’, p.152; Manfred Kets De Vries, ‘The Retirement Syndrome: The Psychology of Letting Go’, European Management Journal, vol. 21, no. 6, 2003, pp.707–16. 16 Fallows, ‘Post-President for Life’. 17 Brinkley, The Unfinished Presidency; John Whiteclay Chambers, ‘Jimmy Carter’s Public Policy Ex-Presidency’, Political Science Quarterly, vol. 113, no. 3, 1998, pp.405–25. 18 Brinkley, The Unfinished Presidency; The Observer, 27 May 2007. 19 Financial Times, 26 December 2007; John Daniel, ‘Soldering On: The PostPresidential Years of Nelson Mandela 1999–2005’, in Roger Southall and Henning Melber (eds), Legacies of Power: Leadership Change and Former Presidents in African Politics (Uppsala, Sweden: The Nordic Africa Institute, 2006). 20 http://www.clubmadrid.org; http://www.theelders.org 21 Newsweek, 1 November 2007.



262 Notes

Aberdeen, Lord, 2, 5, 59, 63, 79–82, 84 Adams, John Quincy, 230 Addington, Henry (Viscount Sidmouth), 6, 12, 42–6, 47, 51 Adenauer, Konrad, 157, 235 Agt, Dries van, 232 Albert, Prince, 59, 66, 71, 75–6, 80, 94 Althorp, Lord, 68 Amato, Giuliano, 227, 232 Amberley, Lord, 87 Anan, Kofi, 237 Andreotti, Giulio, 227 Arbuthnot, Charles, 61 Arbuthnot, Harriet, 61 Asquith, Herbert Henry, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 95, 100, 101, 103–4, 112, 113, 114, 117, 120, 120–5, 130, 138, 146, 184 Asquith, Margot, 104, 121, 124, 133 Attlee, Clement, 2, 8, 11, 12, 146, 147, 149–53, 191, 208, 209 Attlee, Vi, 149, 150, 151, 153 Aznar, José Maria, 233 Baldwin, Lucy, 141, 143 Baldwin, Stanley, 2, 3, 5, 6–7, 9, 10, 117–18, 119, 124, 129, 131, 133, 137, 138, 139, 140–4, 147, 183, 184, 198, 214 Balfour, Arthur, 5, 6, 9, 41, 104, 105, 106, 108, 109–19, 121, 166, 170, 177, 183, 231 ‘Balfour Declaration’, 115 books by, 111–12, 119 defence and foreign policy adviser, 112, 113 First Lord of the Admiralty, 113–14 Foreign Secretary, 114–16 Leader of the Opposition, 110–11 Lord President of the Council, 116–18 Balladur, Édouard, 231 Barre, Raymond, 229 Barroso, José Manuel, 232 Barton, Edmund, 229

Bath, Earl of, 15, 16 Beaverbrook, Lord, 137, 159, 161, 162 Bellingham, John, 52 Benn, Tony, 8, 155, 183, 184, 186, 187, 189, 196 Bentham, Jeremy, 40 Bentinck, Lord George, 76 Bevan, Aneurin, 150 Bildt, Carl, 228, 232, 233, 235 Blair, Cherie, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 222 Blair, Tony, 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 47, 183, 195, 196, 203, 205, 206, 213, 214–25, 229, 237 and Brown government, 222–4 business activities, 221–2 departure from office, 214–17 EU presidency, 224 faith foundation, 222 finances and wealth, 220–2 international issues, 219–20 Middle East envoy, 217, 218–19, 225, 232 memoirs, 219 sports foundation, 220 Bolger, Jim, 228 Bolingbroke, Henry St John, 15 Bonar Law, Andrew, 7, 8, 95, 112, 113, 114, 117, 121, 127, 136–8 Boothby, Robert, 166, 167 Bracken, Brendan, 159, 160 Bradford, Lady, 92 Brandt, Willy, 178, 231 Brook, Sir Norman, 155 Brown, Gordon, 1, 11, 205, 213, 214–15, 219, 221, 223, 224 Bruntland, Gro Harlem, 232 Bruton, John, 232 Burdett-Coutts, Angela, 61 Burke, Edmund, 40 Burton, John, 219, 223 Bush, George H.W., 198, 201, 227, 230, 234, 235 263



Index

Bush, George W., 183, 217, 218, 227, 230, 237 Bute, Earl of, 4, 12, 20, 21, 24–6, 27, 39, 70, 80 Butler, Richard Austen, 135, 146, 157, 158, 161, 164, 166, 174 Callaghan, Audrey, 194, 196 Callaghan, James, 2, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 165, 178, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190–6, 218, 237 Cameron, David, 205, 211, 212–13, 223, 224 Campbell, Alastair, 215, 219, 222, 223, 224 Cambell, Kim, 231, 235 Campbell-Bannerman, Lady Charlotte, 120 Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, 7, 95, 102, 103, 104–5, 110, 119–20 Canning, George, 8, 18, 43, 44, 52, 53, 54–5 Cardwell, Edward, 78 Carnegie, Andrew, 99, 128 Caroline, Queen, 14 Carrington, Lord, 178, 180, 181, 197 Carter, Jimmy, 195, 232, 234–5, 236–7 Carteret, John, 15, 16, 18 Castle, Barbara, 184 Castlereagh, Viscount, 52 Castro, Fidel, 181 Catherine the Great, Tsarina, 17 Chamberlain, Austen, 112 Chamberlain, Joseph, 103, 104, 108, 109, 110, 136 Chamberlain, Neville, 5, 8, 129, 133, 134, 135, 142, 143, 144–8, 164, 181, 191 Chatham, Earl of, see Pitt the Elder, William Cheban-Delmas, Jacques, 229 Cherwell, Lord, 158, 160 Chesterfield, Lady, 92 Chirac, Jacques, 229, 231, 235, 237 Churchill, Clementine, 154, 156, 159, 160 Churchill, Diana, 160 Churchill, Lord Randolph, 93, 160 Churchill, Randolph, 160 Churchill, Sarah, 160

Churchill, Winston, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 95, 99, 113, 118, 119, 131, 133, 134, 135, 136, 138, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 153–60, 162, 164, 165, 166, 177, 178, 183, 189, 198, 200, 219, 235 Clarendon, Lord, 77 Clark, Alan, 9 Clark, Joe, 228, 232, 235 Clarke, Charles, 223 Clarke, Kenneth, 1, 183, 201, 203, 207, 208, 212 Cleveland, Grover, 230 Clinton, Bill, 215, 216, 217, 226, 229, 230, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237 Clinton, Hillary, 234 Ciampi, Carlo, 227 Colombo, Emilio, 227, 231 Committee of Imperial Defence, 113, 116, 117, 118, 139 Cooper, Duff, 142 Copley, John Singleton, 30 Corry, Monty, 91, 166 Courtiour, Roger, 186 Cranborne, Lord, 207 Cresson, Edith, 231 Crossman, Richard, 170 Cryer, Robert, 186 Currie, Edwina, 208 Curzon, Lord, 107, 116, 117, 118, 137 Daladier, Edouard, 146 D’Alema, Massimo, 227 Deakin, William, 159 Debré, Michel, 227 De Gaulle, Charles, 157, 163, 175, 233, 235 De Valera, Eamon, 116, 147 Dehaene, Jean-Luc, 231, 232 Derby, Lord, 7, 58, 59, 65, 66, 75, 76, 81, 85, 86, 87–90, 91 Devonshire, Duke of, 7, 19–20, 21, 24 Diefenbaker, John, 231 Dini, Lamberto, 227 Disraeli, Benjamin, 4, 7, 10, 12, 54, 77, 88, 89, 90–4, 95, 96, 99, 105, 189, 234 Disraeli, Mary-Anne, 91, 92 Donoughue, Bernard, 184, 185, 187, 188, 189



264 Index

Douglas-Home, Alec (Lord Home), 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 164, 166, 169–75, 177, 179, 183, 184, 199, 207, 209 Duncan-Smith, Iain, 203, 204, 212 Eden, Anthony, 6, 8, 9, 11, 33, 142, 144, 149, 151, 152, 154, 157, 158, 160–5, 175, 183, 218 Eden, Clarissa, 161, 164, 165 Edward VII, King, 101, 104, 105, 108, 120 Edward VIII, King, 141 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 155, 157, 158, 235 Elcho, Lady Mary, 112 Elizabeth II, Queen, 155, 158, 161, 165, 166, 169, 185, 194, 198, 218 Esher, Lord, 106 Fabius, Laurent, 227, 231, 235 Fadden, Arthur, 228 Fane, Lady Georgiana, 61 Field, Frank, 199 Foot, Michael, 190, 192 Ford, Gerald, 194, 230, 233, 234, 235, 237 Former British prime ministers age factors, 6–8, 19, 32, 47, 82, 94, 99, 134, 154, 196, 206 back in government office, 4–6, 19–20, 22, 34, 36, 43–6, 51–2, 56–9, 62–3, 64–6, 84–5, 113–19, 139–40, 141, 145–8, 172–3 finances, 10–11, 12, 17, 19, 23, 26, 27, 31, 36, 37, 38, 40, 43, 47, 48, 50, 52, 64, 73, 75, 81, 87, 88, 94, 99, 100, 108, 119, 121, 124, 128–9, 140, 142, 143, 152, 156–7, 161, 162, 167, 170, 182–3, 188, 189, 194–5, 199, 208, 209–10, 220–2 foundations, 12, 200, 201, 216, 217, 220, 222 health issues, 6–8, 17, 18–19, 22, 23, 24, 30–1, 37, 38, 44, 46, 47, 51, 52, 53–4, 55, 56, 58, 59, 64, 65, 71, 73, 82, 88, 90, 94, 98, 99, 106, 109, 118–19, 120, 125, 131, 132, 134, 136, 137, 139, 140, 141, 148, 149, 153, 158, 159, 160, 161, 164, 166, 169, 175, 176, 190, 193, 196, 204, 205

homes, 11, 17, 21–2, 26, 27, 43, 50, 58, 59, 60, 68, 87, 92, 121, 124, 127, 128, 136, 142, 143, 145, 149, 153, 156, 161, 167, 176, 182, 189, 194–5, 198, 210, 216, 220 honours for, 8–9, 39–40, 43, 47, 57, 70, 78–9, 89, 91, 96, 100, 108, 116, 124, 136, 140, 141, 148, 151, 155, 161, 164, 166, 169, 173, 178, 186, 194, 198–9, 208, 218, 244 n.57 impeachment threats, 2, 15–16, 35, 81 as leaders of the opposition, 3, 60–1, 93, 110–11, 149–50, 154, 170, 191–2 memoirs and books by, 9–10, 26, 33, 51, 87, 92–3, 98–9, 101, 111–12, 119, 124, 132–3, 152, 158–9, 162–3, 167, 174, 182, 188–9, 194, 200, 204, 208–9, 219 in parliament, 1–2, 8–9, 16, 22, 23, 26, 28–9, 31, 34, 36, 37, 39, 40, 43, 46, 49, 50, 58, 63, 65, 72, 76, 77–8, 81, 86, 90, 94, 96, 105, 106, 108, 116, 122, 123, 124–5, 132, 134, 137, 142, 146, 151, 156, 161, 164, 168, 169, 175, 177–8, 189, 190, 193, 194, 196, 201, 208, 217, 218 pensions, 10–11, 14, 21, 22, 27, 31, 36, 45–6, 53, 55 relations with monarchs, 4, 15, 25–6, 28, 30, 36, 39, 59, 66–7, 70–1, 75–6, 80, 91–2, 96–7, 166, 194, 208 security protection, 11 Former world leaders, 226–37 back in government, 227–8 and EU, 231–2 finances and business activities, 233–4 foundations, 236–7 health and age issues, 235–6 memoirs, 234–5 in political and public office, 228–32 former US presidents, 226, 227, 229, 230–1, 232, 233, 234–5, 236–7 Fox, Charles James, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 41, 43, 51, 53, 85



Index 265

Fraser, Sir Hugh, 193 Fraser, Malcolm, 231, 232 Frost, David, 188, 200 Gaitskell, Hugh, 150–1, 152 George, II, King, 14, 15 George III, King, 4, 12, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 47, 48, 49 George IV, King, 45, 49, 50, 55 George V, King, 112, 117, 127, 139 George VI, King, 141, 142, 145 Gibbon, Edward, 36 Gilbert, Martin, 219 Gilmour, Ian, 200 Giscard D’Estaing, Valery, 194, 229, 231, 232, 234, 237 Gladstone, Catherine, 95 Gladstone, William, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 58, 59, 75, 76, 80, 82, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94–9, 100, 101, 105, 109, 110, 119, 133, 136, 138, 141, 168, 222 Goderich, Lord (Earl of Ripon), 5, 18, 54, 55–9 Goderich, Lady Sarah, 56, 58 Goldsmith, James, 203 González, Felipe, 232 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 234, 237 Goria, Giovanni, 228, 231 Gorton, John, 228 Grafton, Duke of, 7, 9, 28, 31, 32–4, 42 Grant, Ulysses S., 234 Grenville, George, 8, 21, 25, 27–9 Grenville, Lord (William), 18, 27, 43, 44, 48–51 Grey, Earl, 4, 5, 6, 46, 49, 50, 57, 58, 62, 67–9, 244 n.57 Grey, Sir Edward, 103, 104, 105, 113, 123, 132 Guizot, Francois, 76 Hague, William, 183, 203, 207, 212 Haig, Field-Marshall Douglas, 132, 133 Hailsham, Lord, 164, 166, 178, 194 Haines, Joe, 184 Haldane, Richard Burdon, 103, 104, 113 Halifax, Lord, 135, 145, 147 Hankey, Maurice, 113, 117, 132 Harcourt, Sir William, 97, 101, 102 Harding, Warren, 229

Hardwicke, Lord, 21 Hartington, Lord, 91 Hartling, Poul, 232 Hastings, Warren, 35 Hattersley, Roy, 193 Havel, Vaclav, 235 Hawke, Bob, 231, 233 Healey, Denis, 190, 191, 192 Heath, Edward, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 11, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176–84, 194, 201, 207, 211 Heffer, Eric, 193 Heseltine, Michael, 197, 201, 207 Hitler, Adolf, 134, 135, 142, 147, 162 Hodge, Julian, 195 Home, Lord, see Douglas-Home, Alec Hoover, Herbert, 230, 233, 235 Howard, John, 231 Howard, Michael, 204, 212 Howe, Geoffrey, 200 Howick, Viscount, 69 Hurd, Douglas, 175, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181 Huskisson, William, 56, 59 Hussein, Saddam, 181, 236 Ingham, Bernard, 205 Jagland, Thorbjorn, 228 Jay, Margaret, 196 Jellicoe, Sir John, 132 Jenkins, Anna Maria, 61 Jenkins, Roy, 179, 182, 184, 185, 188, 190, 209 Jervis, Mary Anne, 61 Johnson, Andrew, 230 Johnson, Lyndon B., 234, 235 Joseph, Keith, 169 Jospin, Lionel, 227 Jowett, Benjamin, 95 Juppé, Alain, 227, 229 Keating, Paul, 231, 234 Kennedy, John F., 230, 233, 235 Keynes, John Maynard, 121, 131 Kiesinger, Kurt Georg, 231 Kilmuir, Lord, 163 Kimberley, Lord, 103 Kinnock, Neil, 190, 193 Kitchener, Lord, 113 Kissinger, Henry, 172, 234



266 Index

Kohl, Helmut, 231, 235 Korda, Alexander, 156 Krushchev, Nikita, 170 Lamb, Lady Caroline, 70 Lansbury, George, 131 Lansdowne, Third Marquess of, 41 Lansdowne, Fifth Marquess of, 41 Lawson, Nigel, 200 Leveson Gower, Lord Granville, 52 Levy, Lord, 223 Liddell Hart, Basil, 132 Liverpool, Lord, 7, 18, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 53–4, 119 Livingstone, Ken, 224 Lloyd, Liz, 216 Lloyd, John Selwyn, 162, 164 Lloyd George, David, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 12, 105, 106, 111, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126–36, 137, 146, 148, 177, 178 farming, 128 finances, 128–9 health, 131, 132, 134, 135, 136 journalism, 128 private life, 127–8, 136 political role 1922–31, 129–32 political role after 1931, 133–4 second world war, 135–6 visit to Hitler, 134 War Memoirs, 132–3 Lloyd George, Gwilym, 131, 132 Lloyd George, Dame Margaret, 126, 127, 136 Lloyd George, Megan, 132, 136 Louis Philippe, King, 76 Lubbers, Ruud, 232 MacDonald, James Ramsay, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 117, 129, 131, 133, 138–40, 141 MacDonald, Malcolm, 139 McMahon, Wiiliam, 228, 231 Macmillan, Lady Dorothy, 166–7 Macmillan, Harold, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 131, 143, 152, 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 164, 165–9, 170, 175, 182, 183, 199 Macmillan, Maurice, 166, 167 Macmillan, Sarah, 167 Mackenzie, James Stuart, 25 Mackenzie King, William, 235 Maclean, Sir Donald, 122–3

Major, John, 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 179, 180, 181, 194, 195, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205–14, 218, 229 books, 208–9 business activities, 210, 211 and Conservative Party, 207, 211–13 finances and wealth, 209–10 Major, Norma, 205, 207, 208 Mandela, Nelson, 237 Mandelson, Peter, 203, 220, 223–4 Martens, Wilfried, 231 Maudling, Reginald, 164, 171, 172 Mauroy, Pierre, 229 Meighen, Arthur, 228 Melbourne, Lord, 4, 7, 8, 12, 58, 62, 63, 64, 68–9, 69–73, 97 Melville, Lord, 35, 43 Menzies, Robert, 228, 235 Merkel, Angela, 224 Messmer, Pierre, 229, 231 Miliband, David, 215 Milner, Alfred (Lord), 103 Mitterrand, Francois, 229, 231 Moira, Lord, 41 Montague Browne, Anthony, 157, 158, 159 Moran, Lord, 154, 155, 158, 159 Morgan, Sally, 216 Morrison, Herbert, 150, 152, 191 Mosely, Oswald, 131 Mulroney, Brian, 228 Murdoch, Rupert, 221, 233 Murville, Couve de, 231 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 157, 163 Neave, Airey, 179 Newcastle, Duchess of, 23 Newcastle, Duke of, 16, 19, 20–3 Nixon, Richard, 172, 233, 234 North, Lord, 2, 3, 6, 12, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35–7, 38, 39, 51 Northedge, F.S., 163 Northcliffe, Lord, 127 Northcote, Sir Stafford, 93 Nutting, Anthony, 162, 163 O’Casey, Eileen, 167 O’Casey, Sean, 167 Onassis, Aristotle, 159 Onslow, Arthur, 15



Index 267

Owen, David, 160 Owen, Goronwy, 132 Palmerston, Lord, 5, 7, 57, 63, 72, 78, 80, 81, 82–3, 84, 85, 91, 94, 96, 108, 119, 120, 189 Parris, Matthew, 12 Patten, Chris, 211 Peel, Lady Julia, 75, 78 Peel, Robert, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 54, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74–9, 97, 98, 111 Pelham, Henry, 8, 15, 16, 18–19, 20 Penrose, Barry, 186 Perceval, Spencer, 8, 18, 44, 48, 49, 52–3, 183 Phoenix, Pat, 189 Pinochet, General Augusto, 201 Pitt, Lady Hester, 31 Pitt the Elder, William (Earl of Chatham), 3, 12, 19, 21, 22, 25, 26, 28, 29–32, 33 Pitt the Younger, William, 7, 8, 12, 18, 34, 35, 36–7, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 46–7, 48, 51, 52, 53, 119, 189 Pompidou, Georges, 229 Portillo, Michael, 203 Portland, Duke of, 6, 20, 36, 38, 39, 44, 48, 51–2 Powell, Charles, 3, 198 Powell, Enoch, 167, 171, 172 Powell, Jonathan, 216 Prescott, John, 193 Price, Richard, 40 Priestley, Joseph, 40 Prior, James, 177 Primrose, Neil, 106 Prodi, Romano, 232 Rasmussen, Poul Nyrup, 231 Reading, Lord, 131, 132 Reagan, Ronald, 199, 205, 226, 230, 234, 235, 236 Redmond, John, 104 Redwood, John, 202, 207 Reeves, Emery, 159 Reynaud, Paul, 146 Robinson, Mary, 237 Ripon, Earl of, see Goderich, Lord

Ripon, First Marquess of, 59 Rippon, Geoffrey, 172 Robertson, General Sir William, 132 Rocard, Michel, 231 Rockingham, Marquess of, 20, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, 35, 37–8, 51 Rompuy, Herman Van, 224 Rosebery, Lady Hannah, 100, 101 Rosebery, Lord, 2, 4, 6, 12, 63, 80, 95, 96, 97, 99–106, 183 Roosevelt, Theodore, 230, 235 Russell, Lord John (Earl Russell), 5, 6, 12, 66, 69, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79–80, 81, 83–7, 97, 98, 108 Salisbury, Lord, 41, 93, 100, 103, 107–9, 141 Samuel, Herbert, 131, 132 Santer, Jacques, 232 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 224, 227 Schlüter, Poul, 231 Schmidt, Helmut, 194, 231, 234, 237 Schroder, Gerhard, 231, 233 Secombe, Harry, 189 Shelburne, Earl of (First Marquess of Lansdowne), 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38–41 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 42 Shinwell, Emanuel, 135, 139 Shipley, Jenny, 228, 235 Sidmouth, Viscount, see Addington, Henry Simon, Sir John, 10 Skerret, Maria, 14 Smith, Ian, 173 Smith, John, 195 Soames, Mary, 154 Spencer, Earl, 95, 96–7, 102 Stanley, Lord, see Derby, Lord Stevenson, Frances, 122, 127–8, 132, 133, 134, 136 Sydney, Lord, 39 Taft, William Howard, 226, 229 Tebbit, Norman, 213 Thatcher, Carol, 204, 205 Thatcher, Denis, 2, 197, 198, 199, 204



268 Index

Thatcher, Margaret, 1, 2–3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 168–9, 174, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 187, 189, 193, 195, 197–205, 211, 212, 214, 215, 218, 229, 234 and Conservative Party after 1997, 203–4 finances and wealth, 199 foundation, 200 health, 204, 205 and Major government, 199, 200, 201–3 memoirs, 200, 209 Thatcher, Mark, 198, 199, 204 Thomas, J.H., 139 Thorn, Gaston, 232 Thorpe, Jeremy, 186 Thurlow, Lord, 39 Tindemans, Leo, 228, 231 Trollope, Anthony, 5, 10, 160 Trueman, Freddie, 189 Truman, Harry S., 230, 233, 234 Tweed, Thomas, 128 Tyler, John, 230 Victoria, Queen, 4, 12, 59, 64, 66, 67, 70–1, 73, 75–6, 78, 80, 84, 85, 87, 89, 90, 91–2, 94, 96–7, 99, 100, 107, 108, 156, 159

Waldegrave, William, 194 Walpole, Horace, 16 Walpole, Robert, 1, 2, 8, 12, 14–18, 20, 46, 53 Webb, Beatrice, 104 Weizmann, Chaim, 115 Wellesley, Lord, 49 Wellington, Duke of, 6, 50, 54, 56, 59–67, 69, 94, 98, 99, 160 Whitlam, Gough, 232 Whitelaw, William, 177, 179, 180, 197 Wilde, Oscar, 100 William IV, King, 62, 63, 67, 68, 69 Williams, Francis, 153 Williams, Marcia, (Lady Falkender), 184, 185, 186, 187 Williams, Shirley, 189, 192 Wilkes, John, 29, 31 Wilmington, Earl of, 16, 18 Wilson, Harold, 3, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 141, 152, 153, 170, 171, 173, 174, 175, 178, 184–90, 191, 214, 218 Wilson, Mary, 185, 187, 189, 190 Wilson, Woodrow, 115, 230 Wood, Charles, 77 Wyndham, John, 166, 167 Yeltsin, Boris, 237 Young, G.M., 143, 144



Index 269

After Number 10: Former Prime Ministers in British Politics

Biographical Dictionary of British Prime Ministers

Presidents, Prime Ministers and Chancellors: Executive Leadership in Western Democracies

Prime Curios!: The Dictionary of Prime Number Trivia

Change in British Politics (West European Politics)

Presidents with Prime Ministers: Do Direct Elections Matter?

Scrum Wars: The Prime Ministers and the Media

British Writers: Supplement 10

The new book of prime number records

The New Book Of Prime Number Records

The new book of prime number records

The development of prime number theory

Introduction to Modern Prime Number Theory

British Party Politics and Ideology after New Labour

British Politics for Dummies

Almanac of British Politics

After Words: The Post-Prime Ministerial Speeches

Prime

Prime

British Politics in the Age of Anne

Representation: Theory and Practice in British Politics

After Politics: The Rejection of Politics in Contemporary Liberal Philosophy

After Politics: The Rejection of Politics in Contemporary Liberal Philosophy

Race And British Electoral Politics

Conflict in the Former USSR

After the White House: Former Presidents as Private Citizens

Parallax: Witnessing theory: Volume 10, Number 1

After the White House: Former Presidents as Private Citizens

With Stars Underfoot (Adventures in the Liaden Universe, Number 10)

Prime numbers 101: a primer on number theory

Prime Defender

After Number 10: Former Prime Ministers in British Politics

Biographical Dictionary of British Prime Ministers

Presidents, Prime Ministers and Chancellors: Executive Leadership in Western Democracies

Prime Curios!: The Dictionary of Prime Number Trivia

Change in British Politics (West European Politics)

Presidents with Prime Ministers: Do Direct Elections Matter?

Scrum Wars: The Prime Ministers and the Media

British Writers: Supplement 10

The new book of prime number records

The New Book Of Prime Number Records

The new book of prime number records

The development of prime number theory

Introduction to Modern Prime Number Theory

British Party Politics and Ideology after New Labour

British Politics for Dummies

Almanac of British Politics

After Words: The Post-Prime Ministerial Speeches

Prime

Prime

British Politics in the Age of Anne

Representation: Theory and Practice in British Politics

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