601 Henry Campbell-Bannerman

Constituency : Stirling  Burghs  1868-1908

Henry  unseated  his  fellow  Liberal  John  Ramsay, the  recent  by-election  victor. Henry  had  narrowly lost  in  that  contest.

Henry  was  born  Henry  Campbell   in  Glasgow  in  1836, the  son  of  a  clothing  and  drapery  merchant. He  was  educated  at  Glasgow  High  School  and  Cambridge. He  went  on  to  work  in  the  family  firm.

In  1871, Henry's  uncle  died  and  left  him  an  estate  in  Kent  on  the  condition  that  Henry  adopted  his  surname, Bannerman. That  same  year  he  was  appointed  Financial  Secretary  to  the  War  Office  in  Gladstone's  first  government. He  was  restored  to  the  position  in  1880  ( the  year  his  elder  brother  James  entered  the  Commons  as  a  Conservative )  then  moved  to  Parliamentary  and  Financial  Secretary  to  the  Admiralty  in  1882. In  1884  he  joined  the  Cabinet  as  Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland  where  he  began  to  be  noticed  as  a  talented  politician, remaining  unruffled  through  fierce  attacks  by  the  Irish  MPs.

Henry's  biggest  political  assets  were  affability, an  even  temperament  and  common  sense. He  didn't  make  enemies  easily and  stuck  to  his  principles  throgh  good  and  bad  times.

In  1886  Henry  was  invited  to  stand  against  George Goschen  in  Edinburgh  but  decided  it  was  too  formidable  a  task  and  stayed  where  he  was.

In  Gladstone's  third  government  of  1886  Henry  was Secretary  of  State  for  War  and  held  the  same  post  in  the  final  Gladstone  government  and  Rosebery's  administration. He  persuaded  the  Duke  of  Cambridge  to  resign  as  Commander-in-chief  in  1895, an  action  endorsed  by  the  queen  who  knighted  Henry  shortly  afterwards. He  was  an  able  administrator. Rosebery's  government  actually  fell  on  a  Conservative  motion  to  reduce  his  salary.

In  1895  Henry  had  to  be  dissuaded  from  applying  for  the  vacant  Speakership  because  he  was  thought  to  be  too  valuable  to  his  weakened  party.After  four  years  of  disunited  opposition  the  Liberals  chose  him  as  leader  to  succeed  Sir  William  Harcourt  from  a  limited  field   of  MPs  with  Cabinet  experience. Asquith  could  not  afford  to  stand  at  that  time. Although  he  has  been  described  as  "the  radical  Prime  Minister"  Henry  was  actually  a  centrist  concerned  with  holding  his  party  together. This  immediately  became  a  difficult  task  when  the  Boer  War  started  in  1899  dividing  his  followers  into  imperialist  and  pacifist  sections.  He  distrusted  Milner.  He  could  not  oppose  the  war  itself  but  blamed  the   government  for  starting  it  and   in  1901  denounced  the  "methods  of  barbarism"  ( including  the  setting  up  of  concentration  camps ) employed  to  win  it. He  refused  to  withdraw  his  remarks.

The  divided  party  was  defeated  in  1900's  "khaki"  election  but  Henry  was  able  to  re-group  them  around  opposition  to  the  1902  Education  Act  and  the  Conservatives'  government's  position  in  the  Brussels  Sugar  Convention  of  1902.  He  denounced  the  threat  to  free  trade  in  a  speech  to  the  Cobden  Club  in  1902. This  was  soon  subsumed  into  opposition  to  Joseph  Chamberlain's  tariff  reform  proposals  which  fully  reunited  the  party  and  brought  them  some  new  recruits.

Henry  endorsed  the  Gladstone-MacDonald  pact  of  1903. His  personal  relations  with  the  Labour  leaders  were  good  and  he  said  "we  are  keenly  in  sympathy  with  the  representatives  of  Labour. We  have  too  few  of  them  in  the  House  of  Commons".

In  reaction  to  the  revival  in  Liberal  fortunes  the  leaders  of  the  imperialist  wing  , Asquith, Haldane  and  Grey  forged  the  so-called  Relugas  Compact  in  1903  with  the intent  of  forcing  Henry  to  go  to  the  Lords  before  they  would  agree  to  serve  under  him. This  would  leave  Asquith  in  control  of  the  Commons . This  threat  was  never  carried  out  because  the  conspirators  became  disappointed  in  their  preferred  leader  Rosebery  in  the  meantime.

In  1905  the  beleaguered  Balfour  resigned  and  Henry  became  Prime  Minister  at  the  age  of  69  at  the  head  of  a  minority  administration. Henry  immediately  dissolved  Parliament  and  won  a  sensational  landslide  victory  in  the  1906  election on  the  traditional  platform  of  peace, retrenchment  and  reform. The  three  conspirators  meekly  accepted  office  in  his  Cabinet, generally  recognised  as  one  of  the  most  gifted  to  sit  together.

Henry  was  basically  Gladstonian  rather  than  Radical. He  was  interested  in  social  reform  and  helping  the  poor  but  opposed  to  too  much  state  interference. Haldane  said  he  was  "determined  to  do  as  little  as  a  fiery  majority  will  allow  him".  Haldane's  statement  ignores  the  opposition  provided  by  the  House  of  Lords  to  the  government's  reforming  plans. They  allowed  through  the  Trade  Disputes  Act  giving  unions  some  legal  protection  and  the  Workmen's  Compensation  Act  but  destroyed  Birrell's  Education  Bill  which  attempted  to  undo  the  1902  Act.

In  1907  Henry  met  with  the  French  Prime  Minister  Clemenceau  and  refused  to  give  him  any commitment  of  British  military  support  in  the  event  of  a  war  with  Germany. He  did  however  endorse  the  Anglo-French  staff  talks  arranged  by  Grey  and  Haldane  without  letting  the  rest  of  the  Cabinet  know  about  them. That  same  year  he  antagonised  the  Unionists  by  giving  the  Boer  states  self-government  through  an  Order  in  Council  making  possible  the  Union  of  South  Africa  in  1910.

That  same  year  a  Tory  MP's  death  made  him  Father  of  the  House. Henry's  health  was  beginning  to  fail. He was  nearly  20  stone  in  weight  and  suffered  a  number  of  heart  attacks. He  was  forced  to  resign  in  April  1908. Asquith  became  Prime  Minister  but  allowed  Henry  to  stay  in 10 Downing  St  while  his  health  remained  precarious. He  died  19  days  later  with  the  erroneous  prediction "This  is  not  the  end  of  me".

Lloyd  George  said  "I  have  never  met  a  great  public  figure  since  I  have  been  in   politics  who  so  completely  won  the  attachment  and  affection  of  the  men  who  came  into  contact  with  him. He  was  not  merely  admired  and  respected : he  was  loved  by  us  all.....He  was  absolutely  the  bravest  man  I  ever  met  in  politics". Asquith  told  the  Commons  on  the  day  of  his  funeral "He  was  the  least  cynical  of  mankind  but  no  one  had  a  keener  eye  for  the  humours  and  ironies  of  the  political  situation. He  was  a  strenuous  and  uncompromising  fighter, a  strong  Party  man, but  he  harboured  no  resentments , and  was  generous  to  a  fault  in  appreciation  of  the  work  of  others, whether  friends  or  foes."
  
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