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Henry Campbell-Bannerman
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(b. Glasgow, 7 Sept. 1836; d. London, 28 Apr. 1908). British; leader of the Liberal Party 1900 – 8, Prime Minister 1905 – 8 Campbell-Bannerman ("CB") was the son of a lord provost of Glasgow and educated at Glasgow High School and at the universities of Glasgow and Cambridge. He then entered the family business and this wealth made him financially secure for the rest of his life. He won the seat of Stirling Burghs in 1868 for the Liberals and held it until his death forty years later. "CB" was the first incumbent to be given the official title of Prime Minister and was the last Prime Minister to die in office.
He held junior office under Gladstone (1871 – 4) and in Gladstone's second administration he was Chief Secretary for Ireland (1884 – 5), though without a Cabinet seat. In this post he had to face the full fury of the Irish Nationalist MPs. He then became Secretary of State for War in the short-lived 1886 government, and held the same post again during Gladstone's last spell of office (1892 – 4) and Lord Rosebery's (1895). His range of administrative experience was therefore rather limited.
For most of his career Campbell-Bannerman was not regarded as leadership material — more formidable figures were available. He was an indifferent parliamentary performer, although a steady administrator — seen by colleagues as a proverbial pair of safe hands. He was widely thought to be indolent, and he certainly liked long vacations. In the 1890s the Liberal Party was highly fractious and had already split in 1886 over Gladstone's advocacy of Home Rule (or self-government) for Ireland. Campbell-Bannerman followed Gladstone.
After Rosebery resigned the Liberal leadership at short notice in 1895, the party faced a vacuum. A number of fancied contenders disclaimed any interest in the succession and Asquith was thought to be too inexperienced. The post fell largely by default in 1899 to Campbell-Bannerman. He was widely seen as a temporary leader — until Rosebery returned. "CB" had a difficult task keeping the party together during the Boer War. A number of frontbench colleagues supported the war but he and Lloyd George opposed it. His task was eased and the Liberals unified when Chamberlain split the Conservative Party with his campaign for protection in 1903. An increasingly frustrated Prime Minister, A. J. Balfour resigned in December 1905 and Campbell-Bannerman was invited by the King to form the government. Balfour calculated that the Liberals would be too divided to govern effectively. The leading Liberals Grey, Asquith, and Haldane announced that they would not serve unless Campbell-Bannerman agreed to go to the House of Lords and not as only a nominal Prime Minister. He refused and they backed down. The new minority government lasted only a few weeks until he called an election in 1906, which the Liberals won by a landslide.
Campbell-Bannerman led what turned out to be a great reforming administration. It was a tribute to his skill that he kept so many talented colleagues together. His own role in directing the government was minimal; he took a limited view of his role. He was dogged by ill-health and died after two years in office. He was not a dynamic leader and adhered to traditional Liberal ideas of free trade, self-government, and social reform.
| British History: Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman |
Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry (1836-1908). Prime minister. A genial and popular politician, Campbell-Bannerman acquired a reputation as uninspired. In fact he proved to be more shrewd and determined than his rivals. He held the Liberal Party together during a difficult, post-Gladstonian period, leading it to its greatest electoral victory in 1906.
‘C-B’ was educated in Glasgow and at Cambridge, and became a partner in the family firm. As MP for Stirling Burghs from 1868 C-B showed himself a radical Gladstonian, supporting Scottish disestablishment and Irish Home Rule.
However, C-B made little impact as a junior minister in Gladstone's 1868 and 1880 governments. In 1884-5 he served briefly as chief secretary for Ireland and reached the cabinet as secretary of state for war in 1886. He retained this post in Gladstone's last administration in 1892 and under Rosebery in 1894-5, though by that time he harboured ambitions to become Speaker. Instead he was destined to fill the vacuum left by Gladstone's retirement. Rosebery quit in 1896, and Sir William Harcourt resigned as leader in 1898. When both John Morley and H. H. Asquith declined the poisoned chalice, C-B became leader almost by default.
He was promptly faced with the task of guiding the divided Liberal Party through a period dominated by the Boer War. The use of concentration camps by Kitchener to quell the Boers provoked C-B's memorable words: ‘When is a war not a war? When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa.’ His prospects were rapidly transformed during 1902-4 as the Balfour government split over tariff reform. As prime minister 1905-8 he successfully bridged the gap between New Liberal policies and Gladstonian traditions. Adopting the role of a firm chairman, he gave free rein to his exceptionally able ministers. Important reforms were enacted in connection with trade unions and school meals; old-age pensions were devised by Asquith and the British army reorganized by Haldane. By the time of his retirement through ill-health in 1908, C-B had pointed the Liberals towards their next great goal—the reduction of the powers of the Lords.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman |
Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, 1836-1908, British statesman. Entering Parliament (1868) as a Liberal, he served as secretary to the admiralty (1882-84), secretary of state for Ireland (1884), and secretary of state for war (1886, 1892-95). He was knighted in 1895. In 1899 he was elected leader of the Liberal party (succeeding Sir William Harcourt) and led opposition to British policy in the South African War (1899-1902). When the Conservative government resigned in 1905, Campbell-Bannerman became prime minister. Before ill health caused his retirement in 1908 he had furthered many Liberal measures, including that of self-government for the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
Bibliography
See biography by J. Wilson (1974).
| Wikipedia: Henry Campbell-Bannerman |
| The Right Honourable Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman GCB |
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| In office 5 December 1905 – 3 April 1908 |
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| Monarch | Edward VII |
| Preceded by | Arthur Balfour |
| Succeeded by | Herbert Henry Asquith |
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| Born | 7 September 1836 Kelvinside, Glasgow, United Kingdom |
| Died | 22 April 1908 (aged 71) 10 Downing Street, Whitehall, London, United Kingdom |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Liberal |
| Spouse(s) | Charlotte Campbell-Bannerman |
| Alma mater | University of Glasgow Trinity College, Cambridge, United Kingdom |
| Profession | Merchant |
| Religion | Church of Scotland |
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, GCB (7 September 1836 – 22 April 1908) was a British Liberal statesman who served as Prime Minister from 5 December 1905 until resigning due to ill health on 3 April 1908. No previous First Lord of the Treasury had been officially called "Prime Minister"; this term only came into official usage 5 days after he took office.
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Early Life
Campbell-Bannerman was born at Kelvinside House in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1836 as Henry Campbell. The surname Bannerman was added to his surname in 1871 as required by his maternal uncle's will. It was a condition of his inheritance of his uncle's Kent estate, Hunton Court.
He was the second son and youngest of six children born to Sir James Campbell (1790-1876), who was Lord Provost of Glasgow 1840-1843, and his wife Janet née Bannerman (d. 1873). Henry Campbell was educated at the High School of Glasgow (1845-1847), the University of Glasgow (1851), and Trinity College, Cambridge (1854-1858),[1] where he achieved a Third-Class Degree in Classical Tripos. After graduating, he joined his family's firm, J.& W. Campbell & Co., who were warehousemen and drapers, based in Ingram Street in Glasgow. Campbell was made a partner in the firm in 1860. Following his marriage that year to Sarah Charlotte Bruce, Henry and his new bride set up residence at 6 Claremont Gardens in the Park district in the West End of Glasgow.
Member of Parliament
In 1868 he was elected to the House of Commons as Liberal Member of Parliament for Stirling Burghs — a constituency he was to represent for forty years.
He was appointed as Financial Secretary to the War Office in November 1871, serving in this position until 1874, and again from 1880 to 1882. After serving as Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty from 1882 to 1884, he entered Gladstone's second cabinet as Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1884.
In Gladstone's Third (1886) and Fourth (1892-1894) Cabinets and Rosebery's Government (1894-1895) he served as Secretary of State for War, where he persuaded the Duke of Cambridge, the Queen's cousin, to resign as Commander-in-Chief. This earned Campbell-Bannerman a knighthood.
Liberal leader
In 1898 Campbell-Bannerman succeeded Sir William Vernon Harcourt as leader of the Liberals in the House of Commons. The Boer War (1899-1902) split the Liberal party into Imperialist and Pro-Boer camps and Campbell-Bannerman had a difficult time in holding together the strongly divided party, which was defeated in the "khaki election" of 1900. However the Liberal Party was able to unite in its opposition to the Education Act 1902 and, more significantly, Joseph Chamberlain's proposals for Tariff Reform (protectionism) in May 1903.[2] Chamberlain's proposals dominated politics through the rest of 1903 up until the general election of 1906. Campbell-Bannerman, like other Liberals, held an unshakable belief in free trade.[3] He proclaimed: "...to dispute Free Trade, after fifty years' experience of it, is like disputing the law of gravitation".[4] On another occasion he explained the Liberals' support for free trade:
We are satisfied that it is right because it gives the freest play to individual energy and initiative and character and the largest liberty both to producer and consumer. ... trade is injured when it is not allowed to follow its natural course, and when it is either hampered or diverted by artificial obstacles. ... We believe in free trade because we believe in the capacity of our countrymen. That at least is why I oppose protection root and branch, veiled and unveiled, one-sided or reciprocal. I oppose it in any form. Besides we have experience of fifty years, during which our prosperity has become the envy of the world.[5]
In 1903 the Liberal Party's chief whip negotiated a pact with Ramsay MacDonald of the Labour Representation Committee to withdraw Liberal candidates in order to help LRC candidates in certain seats. Campbell-Bannerman got on well with Labour leaders and he said in 1903: "We are keenly in sympathy with the representatives of Labour. We have too few of them in the House of Commons".[6] However he was not a socialist.[7] One biographer has written: "He was deeply and genuinely concerned about the plight of the poor and so had readily adopted the rhetoric of progressivism, but he was not a progressive".[8]
The Liberals returned to power in December 1905 when Arthur Balfour resigned as Prime Minister, leaving Campbell-Bannerman to form a minority government. Campbell-Bannerman immediately dissolved Parliament and called a general election. In his first speech as premier on 21 December 1905, Campbell-Bannerman launched the Liberal election campaign, focusing on the traditional Liberal platform of "peace, retrenchment and reform":
Expenditure calls for taxes, and taxes are the plaything of the tariff reformer. Militarism, extravagance, protection are weeds which grow in the same field, and if you want to clear the field for honest cultivation you must root them all out. For my own part, I do not believe that we should have been confronted by the spectre of protection if it had not been for the South African war. ... Depend upon it that in fighting for our open ports and for the cheap food and material upon which the welfare of the people and the prosperity of our commerce depend we are fighting against those powers, privileges, injustices, and monopolies which are unalterably opposed to the triumph of democratic principles.[9]
The Liberals swept to power in a landslide victory.
Prime Minister
Campbell-Bannerman's premiership saw the Entente with Russia in 1907, brought about principally by the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey. In that same year, Campbell-Bannerman achieved the honour of becoming the Father of the House, the only serving British Prime Minister to do so to date. Nevertheless his health soon took a turn for the worse, and he resigned as Prime Minister on 3 April 1908, to be succeeded by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Herbert Henry Asquith. Campbell-Bannerman remained in residence at 10 Downing Street in the immediate aftermath of his resignation, and became the only (former) Prime Minister to die there, on 22 April 1908. His last words were "This is not the end of me"[10]. Campbell-Bannerman was buried in the churchyard of Meigle Parish Church, Perthshire, near Belmont Castle, his home since 1887. A relatively modest stone plaque set in the exterior wall of the church serves as a memorial.
Legacy
In an uncharacteristically emotional speech on the day of Campbell-Bannerman's funeral, his successor H. H. Asquith told the House of Commons: "He was not ashamed, even on the verge of old age, to see visions and to dream dreams... He met both good and evil fortune with the same unclouded brow, the same unruffled temper, the same unshakeable confidence in the justice and righteousness of his cause."
Another of Campbell-Bannerman's cabinet Ministers — who was also later to serve as Prime Minister (and, years after his premiership, as Father of the House as well) — David Lloyd George, said of his passing, "I have never met a great public figure 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 absolutely loved by us all. The masses of the people of the country, especially the more unfortunate of them, have lost the best friend they have ever had in the high place of the land. ... He was a truly great man. A great head and a great heart. He was absolutely the bravest man I ever met in politics."
George Dangerfield said Campbell-Bannerman's death "was like the passing of true Liberalism. Sir Henry had believed in Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform, those amiable deities who presided so complacently over large portions of the Victorian era... And now almost the last true worshipper at those large, equivocal altars lay dead".[11] Campbell-Bannerman held firmly to the Liberal principles of Richard Cobden and William Gladstone.[12] It was not until Campbell-Bannerman's departure that the doctrines of New Liberalism came to be implemented.[13]
There is a blue plaque outside Campbell-Bannerman's house at 6 Grosvenor Place, London SW1. On 6 December 2008 former Liberal Democrat leaders Charles Kennedy and David Steel, now Lord Steel of Aikwood, unveiled a plaque to commemorate Sir Henry at at the home in Bath Street, Glasgow. Lord Steel praised his predecessor as Liberal Party leader as an "overlooked radical" whose 1906 landslide victory had paved the way for a succession of reforming governments. "He led the way for the longest period of successful radical government ever, which was continued by Herbert Asquith and David Lloyd George," Lord Steel said.[14]
His bronze bust, sculpted by Paul Raphael Montford is in Westminster Abbey (1908)[15].
Campbell-Bannerman's Government
- Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman — Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of the House of Commons
- Lord Loreburn — Lord Chancellor
- Lord Crewe — Lord President of the Council
- Lord Ripon — Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords
- H. H. Asquith - Chancellor of the Exchequer
- Herbert Gladstone — Secretary of State for the Home Department
- Sir Edward Grey — Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
- Lord Elgin — Secretary of State for the Colonies
- Richard Haldane — Secretary of State for War
- John Morley - Secretary of State for India
- Lord Tweedmouth — First Lord of the Admiralty
- David Lloyd George - President of the Board of Trade
- Sir Henry Fowler — Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
- Sir John Sinclair — Secretary for Scotland
- James Bryce — Chief Secretary for Ireland
- John Burns - President of the Local Government Board
- Lord Carrington — President of the Board of Agriculture
- Augustine Birrell — President of the Board of Education
- Sydney Buxton — Postmaster-General
Changes
- January 1907 — Augustine Birrell succeeds Bryce as Irish Secretary. Reginald McKenna succeeds Birrell at the Board of Education.
- March 1907 — Lewis Harcourt, the First Commissioner of Public Works, enters the Cabinet.
References
- ^ Campbell [post Campbell Bannerman], Henry in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
- ^ John Wilson, C.B.: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (London: Constable, 1973), p. 394.
- ^ Wilson, p. 407.
- ^ Wilson, p. 410.
- ^ Wilson, p. 413.
- ^ Wilson, p. 394.
- ^ Wilson, p. 506.
- ^ A. J. A. Morris, ‘Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008, accessed 29 March 2009.
- ^ 'Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman At The Albert-Hall', The Times (22 December, 1905), p. 7.
- ^ "Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman at 10 Downing Street". http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page141.asp. Retrieved 2007-01-31.
- ^ George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (Serif, 1997), p. 27.
- ^ Morris.
- ^ W. H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition. Volume Two: The Ideological Heritage (London: Methuen, 1983), p. 150.
- ^ "Plaque unveiled to the forgotten Prime Minister, Glasgow Herald, 7 December 2008". http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.2473356.0.Plaque_unveiled_to_the_forgotten_Prime_Minister_from_Glasgow.php. Retrieved 2008-12-07.
- ^ "British war memorials · paul montford". http://www.web-mouse.co.uk/remembrance/additionalinfo/britishwarmemorials/hf-ai-bwm-montford.htm. Retrieved 2007-01-31.
Further reading
- ‘Maistly Scotch’ Campbell-Bannerman and Liberal Leadership by Ewen A Cameron, Journal of Liberal History, Issue 54, Spring 2007
- Campbell-Bannerman (British Prime Ministers of the 20th century series) by Roy Hattersley, Haus publishing 2006
- C. B.: Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman by John Wilson, Constable & St Martin's Press, 1973
- Biography of Campbell-Bannerman by Tony Greaves in 'Dictionary of Liberal Biography', Politico's, 1998
- The Life of the Right Hon Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman GCB by J A Spender, Hodder & Stoughton, 1923
External links
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Wikisource has original works written by or about: Henry Campbell-Bannerman |
- Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Henry Campbell Bannerman
- Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman biography from the Liberal Democrat History Group
- More about Henry Campbell-Bannerman on the Downing Street website.
- Archival material relating to Henry Campbell-Bannerman listed at the UK National Register of Archives
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